“What’s your tat?” A glance toward her neck.
“I’ll tell you later. Maybe. So. Here’s your answer, Colt.”
“To what question?”
“What we’re doing here. Ta-da!”
They were in front of a booth in the corner of the convention center. It was as big as the others yet much more subdued—no lasers, no loud music. A modest electronic billboard reported:
HSE PRESENTS
IMMERSION
THE NEW MOVEMENT IN VIDEO GAMING
This booth featured no play stations; the action, whatever it might be, was taking place inside a huge black-and-purple tent. A line of attendees waited to get inside.
Maddie walked up to a check-in desk, behind which sat two Asian women in their thirties, older than most employees at the other booths. They were dressed in identical conservative navy-blue business suits. Maddie showed her ID badge, then a driver’s license. A screen was consulted and she was given a pair of white goggles and a wireless controller. She signed a document on a screen and nodded toward Shaw.
“Me?”
“You. You’re my guest.”
After the ID routine, Shaw received his set of the toys too. The document he’d signed was a liability release.
They walked toward the curtained opening to the tent, lining up in a queue of other people, mostly young men, holding their own controllers and goggles.
Maddie explained, “I’m also a game reviewer. All the studios hire us to give them feedback about the beta version of new games. Immersion’s one I’ve been waiting for for a long time. We’ll just try it out here for the fun of it, then I’ll take it home for a serious test drive.”
He studied the complicated goggles, which had a row of buttons on each side and earpieces.
The line moved slowly. Shaw noted that a pair of employees—large, unsmiling men dressed in the male version of the women’s somber suits—stood at the entryway, admitting a few people at a time, only after the same number had left by a nearby exit, handing back their goggles to yet another employee. Shaw noted the expressions on the faces of those leaving. Some seemed dumbfounded, shaking their heads. Some were awestruck. One or two looked troubled.
Maddie was explaining, “HSE is ‘Hong-Sung Enterprises.’ A Chinese company. Video gaming’s always been international—the U.S., England, France and Spain all developed games early. Asia’s where it really took off. Japan, in particular. Nintendo. You know Nintendo?”
“Mario, the plumber.” Once off the Compound for college, then work, Shaw’s education in modern culture took off exponentially.
“It was a playing card company in the eighteen hundreds and eventually pioneered console gaming—those’re like arcade games for the home. The name’s interesting. Most people say it means ‘leave luck to Heaven.’ Sort of a literal translation. But I was playing with some Japanese gamers. They think it has a deeper meaning. Nin means ‘chivalrous way,’ ten refers to ‘Tengu,’ a mythical spirit who teaches martial arts to those who’ve suffered loss, and do is ‘a shrine.’ So, to me, Nintendo means a shrine to the chivalrous who protect the weak. I like that one better.
“Now, back to history class. Japan soared in the video gaming world. China missed the party entirely—that’s a joke. Because the Communist Party didn’t approve of gaming. Subversive or something. Until, natch, they realized what they were missing out on: money. Two hundred million Americans play video games. Seven hundred million play in China.
“The government got involved and Beijing had a problem: players sit on their asses all day long. They get fat; they’re out of shape. They’re in their thirties and they have heart attacks. So HSE, Hong-Sung Enterprises, did something about it.” Maddie waved her hand at the Immersion sign. “When you play, you actually move—everywhere, not just standing in front of your TV, swinging a fake tennis racket. You walk around, you run, you jump. Your basement, your living room, your backyard. The beach, a field. There’s a version you can play on a trampoline and they’re working on one you can use in a pool.”
She held up the goggles and pointed. “See, cameras in the front and on the sides? You put it on, get a cellular or Wi-Fi connection and go out into your backyard, but it’s not your backyard anymore. The game’s algorithms change what you see. The tricycle, the barbecue, the cat—everything’s been turned into something else. Zombies, monsters, rocks, volcanoes.
“I’m pretty into sports and exercise, which is why it’s totally my kind of game. Immersion’s going to be the NBT—the next big thing. The company’s already donating thousands of the units to schools, to hospitals to help with rehab, to the Army. There’s software to replicate battlefields, so soldiers can train anytime. In the barracks, at home, wherever.”
They were next to go in. “Okay, this’s it, Colter. Put the goggles on.” He did. It was like looking through lightly tinted gray sunglasses.
“The controller’s your weapon.” She smiled. “Umm, you’ve got it backward. You fire that way, you’ll shoot yourself in the groin.”
He turned the thing around. It was like a remote control and felt comfortable in his hand.
“Just press that button to shoot.”
Then Maddie took his left hand and lifted it to that side of the goggles. “This is the on switch. Press it for a second or so after we get inside. And this button. Feel it?”
He did.
“If you die, hit it. It resets you back to life.”
“Why do you think I’m going to die?”
She only smiled.
23.
When they walked inside the tent, an employee directed them down a corridor to Room 3.
The thirty-by-thirty-foot space looked like a theater’s backstage: walkways, stairs, platforms, furniture, a fake rubber tree, a large sprawl of tarp, a table on which sat bags of potato chips and cans of food, a grandfather clock. He and Maddie had the room to themselves.
Just a game, of course, but Shaw felt himself go into set mode. Just like before rappelling off a cliff, or streaking up a hill on the Yamaha fast enough to go airborne, you have to ready yourself.
Never be unprepared physically or mentally . . .
A voice from on high said: “Prepare for combat. On one, engage your goggles. Three . . . two . . . one!”
Shaw pressed the button Maddie had indicated.
And the world changed.
Astonishing.
The grandfather clock was some sort of bearded wizard, the platforms were icy ledges, the rubber plant a campfire burning with green flame. The tarp was now a rocky coast overlooking a turbulent ocean in which whirlpools swirled and sucked ships into dark spirals. There were two suns in the sky, one yellow and one blue, and they cast a faint green haze over the world. The walls were no longer black curtains but instead distant vistas of snowcapped peaks and a towering volcano, which was erupting. All in stunning 3-D.