The Last Game: Cypherpunk Stories

By Steve Wire

The app is called WARLD. 300 million downloads and counting. Sure it's addicting, but it gets people out of their comfort zones and on their way to new places, making new connections and finding new friends. What's the harm?

Detective Jonah Ramirez thinks the game has a sinister, hidden purpose. He crosses paths with Yu-ri Park, a rebellious hacker with suspicions of her own. Together they uncover what the game is doing to society, and conclude that the game is designed to accomplish a particular task: to upend civilization.

But how can they possibly stop it? And do they want to?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Wire
• Release date: Oct 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393600305

Steve Wire

Steve Wire writes science fiction about the battle between government and technology, authority and innovation. Read on for smart rebels and cool hacks.

Book preview

The Last Game

a Cypherpunk Story

by Steve Wire

ONE

DETECTIVE JONAH RAMIREZ was playing a game.

Inside the game, his avatar was an armored Sasquatch named Grod. Grod's plate mail clanked as he climbed to a high vantage point in the city, where he could get a clear crossbow shot at his enemy. If he ran out of crossbow bolts, he could hurl virtual boulders – playing a mid-evolved Sasquatch had its advantages.

Outside the game, Ramirez exited the stairwell of the downtown apartment complex onto the roof. The afternoon was gray and cold, and he stepped through dark rain puddles. The high-altitude breeze pulled at his trenchcoat as he held his phone up to the neighboring building and looked through its camera.

Inside the game, Grod's enemy was a high-evolved elf wizard named Badassador. The name wasn't the worst thing about the guy, and Ramirez couldn't wait to take a shot at him. At the top of the ancient stone building, Grod roared a challenge from its rooftop, brandishing a slender elven blade.

The sword was useless to any character but an elf... irresistible bait. Ramirez knew that Badassador would hope to slay Grod and take the sword from the pile of gear that would remain on this rooftop after Grod respawned halfway across town.

Outside the game, Badassador's player was a psycho named Alderson who had been holding his wife, son and daughter at gunpoint. He had called 9-1-1 himself and told them he had stopped taking his schizophrenia meds three days ago, when he had lost his job.  He told them he hadn't slept since, that he felt sure he was going to shoot someone, although he didn't know why and he didn't know who. SWAT had been dispatched instantly... but didn't have a shot through the window of the ninth-floor apartment. They had the battering ram ready and were about to go in.

Then Jonah had this crazy idea.

They had Alderson's social media information in minutes, and aside from some ranting posts on Facebook, it was obvious that he was deeply addicted to WARLD.

Jonah played the game on weekends, running quests on Sunday afternoons. He had been a hardcore gamer in his twenties, sinking thousands of hours into WoW and Fallout 4 and Everquest... then he had made detective and found himself with responsibilities he couldn't escape, and indulging in WARLD was the last remnant of his bygone era.

Two hours ago, Jonah had handed over Grod's life savings in gamecoin to someone on his raiding team, an eternally-online elf thief he had never met IRL, in exchange for the elf sword. Thirty minutes ago, Jonah met the SWAT lead outside the apartment building. And now...

Jonah tapped challenge again, and Grod roared. He tapped the microphone icon, and said, Badassador won't fight me. Is he a noob or what? Voice recognition caught Badassador and noob perfectly. Grod's taunt appeared on the screens of every WARLD player within a quarter mile. A reply appeared on Jonah's phone:

Badassador: WHO DARES APPROACH MY DOMAIN? 

Jonah stood in quiet awe of the power of addiction. This guy had a gun on his family, but he stopped to play this stupid game. Jonah waited, watching the opposite rooftop through the game app on his phone.

A man in sweatpants and a grimy t-shirt burst through the stairwell door onto the rooftop across the street, phone in hand. Jonah watched him through his phone's camera – the WARLD app applied its algorithms, animating the man as a silver-haired elf in a brilliant blue wizard's robe.

Gotcha, Jonah muttered. He tapped his screen, firing a crossbow