Four
“With that said, let me join my brother Peter in thanking all of you for your support over the past two years, from our crowdfunding campaign to today’s launch. We and everyone here at GreySoft look forward to exploring the stories buried in Universe with you for years to come.”
Mouth dry but smile still full-wattage, Jason reached over to a switch on the control board. It was mostly for show, of course, for dramatic effect—all of the back-end coding was ready and loaded, it just hadn’t been switched on yet.
That was what the switch was for—the switch and a dozen software engineers upstairs, watching the broadcast and ready to jump into action at the slightest sign of a hiccup in the Universe engine or servers.
After a moment’s hesitation, Jason flicked the switch, turning back to the cameras with a smile that was a little more sad than it had been a moment before—he couldn’t help it. Really, it was all he could do to keep his voice steady. “Welcome to the full-immersion Universe experience. May the road rise up to meet you and all of your adventures be fulfilling ones.”
The director motioned beyond the lights and the cameras, just barely in his range of vision. The lights went dark.
“We’re clear,” the director said, then turned to start talking to the production crew.
Jason sighed and slumped into a chair, leaning forward and scrubbing his hands over his face. He took one breath, then another, willing his eyes to stop stinging, fighting to master himself before anyone could notice.
“Well done.”
He glanced up at the sound of Brannon’s unmistakable brogue and smiled. “You think so?”
Brannon Marsden, his brother-in-law and the last of the quartet that stood at the heart of GreySoft’s foundations, nodded, leaning against the boards and server racks that ran the length of the wall that had been Jason’s backdrop for the broadcast. “I do. Better than I could have done. Peter’s going to be pleased.”
Jason blew out a quiet breath, his voice low. “It should’ve been him.”
“It should have been,” Brannon agreed, his voice quiet, so they wouldn’t be overheard. “But it didn’t work out that way. Stream numbers looked good—a lot of YouTube and Twitch traffic. We’ll see how the numbers look in a few days.”
“Subs or replays?”
Brannon smiled crookedly. “Both.” He extended a hand and Jason took it, letting his brother-in-law pull him out of the chair and upright. “It’s about both, right?”
Jason smiled faintly and shrugged. “Maybe.” He dug his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans, thumbed the screen on. No new messages.
Brannon’s smile shrunk. “I’m sure it’s okay.”
“Yeah.” Jason took a deep breath, stretching until his back cracked. “You’re right. C’mon, let’s get upstairs to the office. Curious to see what’s what now that systems are up.”
The smile returned. “Going to log in yourself?”
“Later,” Jason said. As much as he loved what they’d built, it didn’t feel right to log in while they were still waiting to hear from Peter about how bad his situation might be. “Might wait to jump in when Peter’s ready to log in.”
The production crew was packing up most of their equipment and Jason and Brannon left them behind, heading down a hallway toward the elevators up. The third floor corridor’s right hand wall was dominated by floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking carefully tended trees that gave way to managed forest beyond. Jason’s pace slowed for a moment as he stared out at those trees, at that forest, taking in the blaze of autumn colors, not quite yet at their peak for the season. His throat got tight for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate and he drifted toward the window, just staring.
Brannon stayed quiet, watching, leaning against the gray-painted left-hand wall, just watching.
“How long do you think they’ll stay in the trees?” Jason asked softly.
“Huh?”
“The leaves,” he said. “How long do you think they’ll stick around?”
Brannon straightened, moving to join Jason at the window. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Guess it depends on how much rain we get and any wind. That side’s pretty sheltered. Could stick around for a long time. Maybe even until we see the first snow.”
“It’d be nice,” Jason said, then shook his head. “I don’t think they’ll make it that long, though.”
“Storms?”
“They always come,” he said. “And the leaves are always gone well before the snow flies.” He glanced toward Brannon. “Did Peter ever tell you why he liked this spot better than anywhere you guys looked at for headquarters?”
Brannon shook his head. “No, but I never asked, either. It didn’t matter. I liked it well enough and it’s near enough to things that Marissa doesn’t feel trapped and there’s options for schools when we’re ready to send Wynter.”
“It mattered to him,” Jason said, watching the wind ruffle distant branches. “It reminded him of where we grew up.” Happier times, the places we escaped to, where we pretended everything was fine and nothing would go wrong. It reminded him of days by the lake, afternoons in the woods, autumn bonfires and summer farmer’s markets, of artificial simplicity that we still cling to because it’s easier than remembering the parts the sucked, the parts that hurt more than we’re willing to admit.
“Oh,” Brannon said, his voice quiet. He, too, watched the wind in the trees, then sighed, reaching to squeeze Jason’s shoulder. “Do you want me to lie?”
“It might be easier,” Jason whispered. “It could be easier on all of us if you did.”
“Marissa didn’t ask how he looked when I picked him up,” Brannon said, then glanced up and down the corridor to make sure they were alone. “I don’t think she wanted to know.”
“There’s a lot of things that we don’t want to face, Brannon. Peter’s fragility is one of them.” We fooled ourselves into thinking that everything was going to be okay from here on out. It’s been years since anything went sideways, years since a whisper of anything wrong. Now this—this, now, when all of us should be at our highest.
We’re right back to where we were when I was seven and this hit him again and Mom and Dad stopped worrying about Rissa and I and their whole world was nothing but Peter. Jason’s eyes began to sting again but he blinked away the tears. No one was more angry at their parents for that than Peter was—the resentment and anger and hurt had even faded to a dull ache for Jason, who’d suffered the worst of their neglect, one year younger than his genius brother whose health always seemed to teeter on a razor’s edge.
“Peter is one of the strongest people I’ve ever met, Jason,” Brannon said, his voice gentle. It wasn’t as if Jason had never heard those words before, but something about them this time made his throat tighten uncomfortably, as if his heart and his gut knew something the rest of him didn’t—or didn’t want to accept. “It’ll be all right, no matter what. You know him.”
“Yeah,” Jason said, looking down. “Yeah, I do.” He knew that his brother would worry more about taking care of everyone else than taking care of himself. It made him ache to think of it, but was a reality he’d lived with since childhood. His older brother never asked for much beyond what he thought would benefit all of them. Jason had always thought it had something to do with the way their parents had always been more concerned with Peter rather than the rest of them, something that he suspected his brother had always secretly felt guilty about. It had never really mattered to Jason—as long as he had his brother and sister, that was all he needed. Brannon had come as an added bonus when Marissa had brought him home from school one Christmas and introduced him—by then, he and Peter had been legally emancipated from their parents and were living on their own, together, Peter already racing through college coursework and Jason finishing high school, already decided on a stint in the service after graduation. Four years later had come baby Wynter, and she’d seemed like a miracle to both Jason and Peter, a tiny, fragile piece of their sister and Brannon, and suddenly, it was the five of them, not the four.
His phone buzzed in his back pocket and Jason shivered, exhaling a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “It’s probably Peter,” he murmured as he dug around for the phone.
Brannon squeezed his shoulder. “Likely. Let me know if he wants me to come pick him up.”
Jason shook his head. “I can do it. They’ll need you here more than they’ll need me if something starts to slip sideways.”
“Eh,” Brannon said as he started walking down the hall. “Half of them still can’t understand me when I speak anyway. I think it’s the language barrier.”
“Language barrier?” Jason blurted, his attention dragged away from his phone a moment before he could register the words on the screen. “You’re speaking English. So are they.”
Brannon shrugged. “Must be the accent and the bloody slang.” He shot John a cheeky grin over his shoulder and continued on toward the elevator.
Jason sighed and shook his head. “Bastard,” he muttered, then glanced down at his phone. The words glowed white against the blue starscape background.
Home safe. Will be in soon. Good job.
Jason slumped against the windows for a second, worry-tinged relief washing through him, leaving knees momentarily weak. He took a slow, deep breath and forced himself upright again, starting to walk toward the elevator even as he texted his brother back.
Thanks. Be safe.
He got an emoticon in the shape of a thumbs-up as a response.
Some of the weight he’d felt tugging at his shoulders lifted away as he put his phone back into his pocket and stepped into the elevator—Brannon had held it for him and watched him now with an arched brow.
“He’s home,” Jason said simply as the doors slid shut. He leaned against the back wall of the elevator. “Said he’d be in soon.”
“Doesn’t need a ride, then,” Brannon said, tucking his hands into his pockets. “That’s probably a good sign.”
“Maybe.” Jason shrugged. “Could mean any number of things, but his neurologist didn’t keep him, so that’s something.” Last time Peter’s condition had flared up, his neurologist had immediately admitted him to the hospital downtown. That had been just before Wynter was born, three and a half years ago. “You know him, though. He’ll probably walk here.”
Brannon grinned. “Yeah, probably.”
Jason tilted his head back, closing his eyes as the elevator carried them upwards. “You were worried about what he looked like, though.”
“Well, I’ve seen him look worse,” Brannon said. “Don’t hop back on that worry train just as quickly as you’ve gotten out of it, Jason. Seriously, leave it alone. If there’s something we need to worry about, Peter will tell us as much. Until then, let’s just be happy that everything seems to be going well with the launch and let’s enjoy that we’ve done it. We delivered on what we promised when we jumped into this.”
Jason had to smile, the spirits that had begun to sag suddenly buoyed again. “You’re right,” he murmured. “We did it.” He thought about two nights before, the three AM conversation with Scarlet in the game, at her hold in Elfaedil. They’d stepped out of character after a particularly intense roleplaying session with a few other players and retreated to her sanctum, talking about work and life and how she was worried her roommate was getting too wrapped up in things that maybe didn’t matter as much as she thought they did and forgetting to have fun. Jason had just let her talk because he liked it when she did, he liked hearing about her life and what was happening in it, he liked having her to talk to when he needed someone to vent to, when he needed someone to share just about anything with. He wasn’t sure what that meant but figured eventually he’d figure it out.
She’d mentioned that she was going to the launch today. He’d said something stupid and inane in response and part of him still wondered why he hadn’t told her that he’d find her later in game, after the initial excitement and any kinks had been worked out. It was dumb and he’d wished that he’d thought about it then.
The elevator stopped and he startled. Brannon was grinning at him.
Jason’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that look for?”
“You should see your face,” Brannon said, still grinning, then stepped out of the elevator. “You’re off somewhere right now.”
Jason snorted softly. “If you say so.”
They walked out into the open expanse of GreySoft’s top floor, seven storeys up, commanding a view of the managed forestland to the west and south, farmer’s fields to the north, and the sprawl of the nearest city to the east. Windows ran the length of all four exterior walls, only a few partitions set up inside aside from a large square in the center of the building that housed things like the elevators, restrooms, an experimental gaming suite, and a conference room. In the northwest corner was Peter’s office, partitioned off from the rest of the space. Brannon’s was downstairs, on the sixth floor, and Jason was more likely to kick back on one of the couches up here on the seventh floor with his tablet or his sketchpad, or to start plastering the walls of the conference room or the central column with huge sheets of paper and hand-drawn storyboards. He wasn’t even sure if he had an office anymore, or if they’d converted it into something else since he never seemed to use it.
A few of the senior techs were scattered among the desks, monitoring server statuses and killing bugs as soon as they cropped up. A cluster of three stood around a fourth and Jason arched a brow at the sight. Next to him, Brannon shook his head.
“Can’t be anything that serious,” he murmured. “No one called me.”
Their senior gamemasters were clustered in the southeast corner, some kicked back on the couches with their feet up on the square coffee table between them, others at the long desks along the windows, each immersed in their work—or perhaps just in the game. Sometimes, it was hard to tell, and in truth, the game’s community was more self-policing than any of them cared to admit—but were secretly proud of. There was certain hot spots, certain worlds that were more troublesome than others, but for the most part the game’s population was well-behaved and the problems that cropped up were minimal based on the comparisons they’d run with other massively multiplayer games. Jason watched them for a moment, nodding absently in response to Brannon.
“Seems pretty quiet.”
Brannon nodded, gaze wandering before he wandered over to the coffee table, snagging a remote to turn on one of the monitors, tapping a few buttons and scrolling through realms until he finally settled on the first one they conceptualized, the heart of everything he and Jason and Peter had ever put together for the game. Triskelion had been the first, and while each of them worked hard to give equal attention to all of the worlds they’d developed for the game, each of them would admit that Triskelion remained the nearest and dearest to their hearts.
“Everything seems like it’s going according to plan, though,” Brannon said as he watched the screens, the camera tracking one of the senior gamemasters in his wanderings through the forests in Elfaedil. Teasing glimpses of Coronet, the province’s principal city, flashed between the trees. As Brannon turned up the volume, they could hear the faint sound of spacecraft soaring overhead of the gamemaster they were tracking, likely headed either for the port on the far side of Coronet or perhaps one of the ones on the outskirts of Elfaedil. Brannon glanced sidelong at Jason, brow quirking. “What do you think this is going to do with the player base, with what they’re playing? Think we’re going to see a shift?”
“Maybe,” Jason said, pursing his lips. “Might see an increase in cross-genre and some more travel between worlds, just so folks can experience something a little different. Not sure if we’ll see a lot of rerolls or additional characters, but we’ll see what happens there. Depends on how compelling we’ve managed to make everything else.”
“The story team’s been on their game,” Brannon murmured. “So has the art team.”
Jason inclined his head. He appreciated the compliment to both of his teams and would likely pass the information along to them when he headed down to the fourth and fifth floors later to check in with them. It was only a matter of time before he headed down to do that—but probably not before his brother made it into the office. “We’ll see what the base decides.”
Brannon nodded, studying him sidelong for a second as Jason watched the screen. “You’re distracted,” he observed.
Jason shrugged and Brannon continued.
“You’re distracted but it’s not because of what we were talking about downstairs. It’s something else.”
That made him startle a little, glancing at his brother-in-law with brow furrowed and jaw slack. “Huh?”
Brannon smiled and shook his head. “Just what I said. Whatever it is, I hope it’s a good thing.”
Jason blinked at him, then caught sight of a flash of red out of the corner of his eye. A figure had just moved across the screen, dressed in a familiar red cloak. The gamemaster they followed tracked the figure for a few seconds, watching her as she crossed the path and plunged deeper into the woods, a smaller figure in a gray cloak trailing her.
Jason smiled.
“Maybe it is,” he murmured, gazing at the screen. “I guess we’ll see.”
