The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble

Erman nodded thoughtfully.

‘Interesting question, hmm …’

He thought in silence for a few seconds.

‘Obviously, the best thing would be to blow the whole thing sky-high, but maybe that’s a bit over the top …’

‘Really, you think so?’ slipped out of HP, but Erman didn’t seem to notice.

‘If I were you, I’d probably focus on the money,’ he went on.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, you already know how the rewards work, a foreign bank card linked to an anonymous account. Pretty much like the charge card for a mobile. You just take out the money, and it’s impossible to trace who’s got which card.’

HP nodded impatiently. Get to the point, mofo!

‘All their payments work the same way, in principle. Wages for the functionaries, the Ants and the subcontractors, it’s all done by cards, and those in turn are fed from an anonymous account in a bank somewhere in the Caribbean. The mother account is always loaded with cash to keep the whole thing rolling. If I seriously wanted to fuck with the Game Master, I’d try to get hold of the account number and make a few withdrawals. That would paralyse the whole Game for weeks, maybe months, and you’d end up with enough money to hide yourself away pretty damn well in some distant but agreeable place.’

‘Would that really work?’

‘Yeah, probably.’ Erman shrugged. ‘The point is that because the Game is damn careful to keep everything anonymous, there are no individuals linked to the account. All you need is the numerical combination that’s currently being used. I’d guess that they change the number all the time, so you’d have to be pretty smart, and pretty quick. I never got to see any of the numbers myself, I just organized the set-up itself. The guys they flew in used to type them in whenever it was necessary. But it’s all inside the farm. I’m sure of that.’

‘Is it possible to hack into it?’

‘No, like I said, I tried that, and if I can’t get into it when I was the person who set the whole thing up, then I guarantee you that no-one else would be able to either. We’re talking IT security that’s better than they have at the Pentagon …’

Sure, HP thought sceptically, but either way, hacking didn’t look like an option. ‘So how would you get hold of the account number?’

He had already guessed the answer.

‘You’d have to get inside the farm. There’s a control room, and once you got inside there it would be possible to extract whatever you needed, as long as you knew where to look. If they so much as guess that the account has been blown, they’ll change the code instantly.’

HP nodded as he stubbed out his cigarette on his shoe.

This was all sounding a bit Mission Impossible.

But what the hell, he hadn’t come all the way out here just to go home empty-handed. Too much information was better than too little.

‘Can you tell me what I’d have to do?’ he said, tossing the butt towards the nearest tree.

Erman chuckled.

‘Sure, 007, no problem!’

He turned on his heel and went back inside the house.

HP took the chance to light another cig. This whole thing was starting to sound like a fucking blockbuster film. He wasted a couple of minutes trying to work out which one came closest. Conspiracy Theory maybe, or Enemy of the State? It was like a mixture of all of them, some kind of tribute thing. He took a couple of deep drags. High above he could hear a familiar droning.

Farthundra Airline’s afternoon flight, he grinned to himself.

Erman came back out onto the porch with a folded piece of paper in his hand.

‘This is all you need: the address of the farm and a few old usernames that might still work. I’ve written down the bank’s website as well, in case you make it that far. Now you just have to figure out a way of getting into the building, because I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.’

HP took hold of the piece of paper but Erman didn’t let go.

‘Promise me one thing, HP.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve seen how I live, what the Game did to me.’ His stare was back, the one that got to HP. ‘Promise me that you’ll use this information to give them one hell of a fucking kick in the balls, just promise me that!’ Erman’s face was starting to change colour again.

‘Sure, mate, no problem, take it easy!’ HP urged uncomfortably, snatching the note.

He’d got what he wanted, and it was pretty much time to get away from there.

The address was the only thing he really wanted, the rest was more or less meaningless. No matter what he’d promised this hillbilly, he was hardly going to break into a fucking server-farm, all he needed was a way to get to the Game Master and now he’d got it. A visiting address, no less. All he had to do was head out there and knock on the door, if he still felt like doing that after everything he’d heard.

The buzzing sound above them returned and Erman twitched. He stared anxiously around the treetops trying to catch a glimpse of the plane.

‘Take it easy, Erman, it’s just Farthundra’s very own airline doing its daily flight,’ HP grinned nervously. ‘Nothing worth crapping your pants over.’

‘What-did-you-say?!’ Erman spun towards him and the crazy look had made a full-blown comeback.

‘I said it’s nothing to get steamed about, just a plane towing an advert for some fucking farmers’ market in Fjärdhundra.’

He was speaking slowly and deliberately, the way Erman had done to him not half an hour ago, but he was worried and he sounded it.

‘You’ve seen the plane before?’

Erman’s face had gone completely white.

‘Y-yes, it flew past just before you picked me up in your hicksville limo, just take it easy, okay!’

Erman didn’t seem to hear him. He stood completely still for a few seconds.

‘Go!’ he finally managed to say through gritted teeth.

‘What?’ HP didn’t understand anything.

‘Go, get lost, fuck off, are you thick or what?’

He spun his arms and took a step towards HP.

HP backed away instinctively and held up his hands.

‘Okay, okay, calm down, I’m going, I’m going!’

Christ, the bloke had really lost it this time.

‘It’s only a fucking advertising plane, Erman.’

So much for that brilliant plan.

Nilla still hated her, she’d understood that much. Which wasn’t really so surprising, seeing as it had been her adored big brother who had gone through the balcony railing.

Nilla and Dag had always been close, and she’d never accepted the investigation’s conclusion that his death had been at least in part an accident. The company the housing association contracted to renovate the façade had cut corners when they were fixing the balconies back on, and several bolts had evidently been missing.

‘An unfortunate circumstantial coincidence,’ it had said in the verdict.

For Henke that meant ten months for causing another person’s death instead of manslaughter. If the balcony railing had been correctly fitted with all its bolts in place, Dag would probably have been okay.

But it was difficult to know for sure. The shove had been pretty hard, maybe hard enough for him to have tumbled over the railing? That couldn’t be ruled out, at any rate, or so the court had reasoned.

For her own part, she doubted that conclusion. Dag was big and heavy, almost ninety kilos of muscle, and he had good balance. If the railing hadn’t given way, he wouldn’t have fallen, and their lives would have looked very different. Henke would never have ended up in prison and she would never have been released from hers. His imprisonment and her freedom – each one was dependent on the other.

The problem was just that it shouldn’t have been like that. That’s what she had wanted to tell Nilla. What had really happened that night. And why …

‘Only a plane? Only a plane!’ Small drops of saliva hung in the yellowing beard around Erman’s mouth.

‘You don’t get any of it, do you, you stupid fuck?! They’ve got ears everywhere, absolutely every-fucking-where! Didn’t you understand what I said about the Ants? Who did you talk to on your way here, the bus driver, some nice old lady on the train? Did you happen to mention it on the phone to some friend, or were you stupid enough to write the directions on your computer?’

His voice had hit falsetto again. Fists clenched, he came on a couple of steps.

‘None of that, I promise …’ HP assured him.

HP was slowly backing towards the wheel-tracks that led in the direction of civilization. This was getting really creepy now. He had to get away from this psycho, straight away. God knew what would happen otherwise. In the forest no-one can hear you scream.

Erman jabbed his right index finger at HP. ‘Google!’ he managed to spit. ‘You google-mapped the address, admit it!’

‘No, I didn’t!’ HP replied instinctively, but realized at the same moment that that’s exactly what he’d done.

Erman must have noticed the change in the look on his face, or else he guessed that HP was lying.

Either way, he leapt a couple of strides towards HP.

‘You stupid fuck!’ Erman roared. ‘I gave you one simple instruction. Don’t talk to anyone, don’t use anything electronic. And you go and google-map me! You might as well have been working for the Game Master directly, Christ, I ought to kill you on the spot!’

‘Sorry!’ HP muttered, now too terrified to even try to lie.

For a moment he thought he was going to end up buried like the fucking Bocksten Man. Dug up in two hundred years time to get his perfectly preserved backside put on display in a glass case in Farthundra’s local history museum. The thought almost made him crap his pants.

Erman suddenly came to a halt, like he’d been turned off.

For a couple of seconds he stood there, apparently thinking. Then without a word he turned on his heel and disappeared inside the house.

HP didn’t hang around to find out if he was going to come back out with a shotgun. Instead he turned and fled as fast as he could along the path back towards the road. Above him he could still hear the drone of the aeroplane. It sounded like it was circling.

After a couple of hundred metres he reached the edge of the forest. There was about a kilometre of gravel track through the open fields before he reached the relative safety of the road. He looked anxiously over his shoulder. Shit, obviously he should have nicked the flatbed moped, or at least pulled the spark-plug out or something. Now he’d just be an open target out there.

Oh well, no point worrying about that now.

He couldn’t hear anything like a moped engine, but that was mainly because of the damn plane that was still circling overhead. He noticed that the advertising banner was gone. So what was the idiot doing up there, then?

He left the shade of the forest and set off towards the road. Every ten metres or so he glanced behind him. Still nothing. He was starting to get his fear under control. What a psycho the bloke had turned out to be. Thanks a lot, Manga, that was a brilliant tip-off!

Another glance. No sign of Erman. Great!

It wasn’t until he got about halfway across the field that he noticed a change in the sound of the plane engine. Before, it had been mainly a monotonous buzzing sound, one note higher or lower depending on where in its circuit it happened to be. But suddenly the sound was getting louder, both in volume and pitch, and when he looked over his shoulder yet again to make sure Erman wasn’t coming after him, he discovered that the plane was diving straight at him like he was fucking Cary Grant! He could hardly believe his eyes.

It wasn’t until the plane was more or less filling his field of vision that he had the sense to get really scared. Even then, the roar of the engine and the sound of the wind on the wings was drowning out all his thoughts. He saw the whirring propeller coming straight towards him and, worse, just beneath it the metal beam connecting the undercarriage, but he was paralysed and still couldn’t take in what was going on.

Shit! was the only contribution his brain could come up with, then he tripped over his own feet and fell to the ground.

He felt the rush of wind as the undercarriage missed his head by the smallest of margins before he became aware that his mouth was full of gravel.

The engine noise started to decrease and HP raised his scratched face just enough to see the plane bank in a slow left-hand turn, climbing. It took him a couple of seconds to realize that the pilot was climbing to gain enough height to make a second attempt.

Fuck! he thought in panic, struggling to his knees and spitting gravel, then forcing his paralysed legs into action. He abandoned the track and headed off straight across the field in the direction of the bus stop. Dust and soil swirled up around his feet and the stubble tore viciously at his trouser-legs.

Scratch-bang-scratch-bang-scratch-bang.

HP was running as he had never run before, that much was certain.

At least five hundred metres to salvation. The plane was almost halfway through its circle. His heart was pumping so hard that he thought it would burst in his chest. He could taste blood in his mouth, and his pulse was pounding in his temples.

Then he heard the roar of the engine get louder again as the plane dived towards him Alfred Hitchcock-style, and now the noise was even more ear-splitting, if that was possible. He ran on in panic, trying to zigzag to present a harder target, the way you did in Counterstrike. But this was IRL, and not some fucking computer game! The plane was coming closer and closer and nothing seemed likely to divert it.

Suddenly he caught sight of something in the stubble a few metres ahead of him. It looked like a white plastic stick of some sort, about two metres long.

He didn’t really know where the idea came from, but just before the plane was on top of him he threw himself at the stick, grabbed it with both hands and with one end stuck under his armpit, something like a knight’s lance, he rolled over onto his back.

The plane filled his world, the roar of the engine was deafening. As the rush of air whipped his breath away he felt the stick strike something solid and then it was torn from his hands.

Then the plane was gone. HP rolled over onto his stomach again. The remnants of the shredded stick lay scattered a few metres away.

Must have hit the propeller, he thought as he struggled to his feet again.

The plane had started to climb again. But this time the engine didn’t sound quite so angry. It was rising and falling as if the engine was running unevenly, and HP could clearly hear a whistling sound that must be the damaged propeller.

The pilot was clearly having trouble, but HP didn’t wait to see how he was going to deal with it.

Instead he set off at full speed towards the bus stop which was now visible up ahead. As he got closer he saw a bus just passing the stop and he changed direction in an attempt to intercept it. He might just make it …

Then he caught sight of something from the corner of his eye and realized that the pilot had changed tactic. Instead of diving from a few hundred metres up, the plane was sniffing across the field, and HP could see the undercarriage almost touching the stubble.

This time it wouldn’t do any good to dive, he’d get his skull crushed either by the wheels or the bar between them.

Terrified, he speeded up even more. He raced towards the road, seeing the bus come closer, and exerted every last bit of strength to beating it. The noise of the plane getting louder spurred him on.

He put one foot in the ditch which made him lose his balance, but he was running so hard that he carried on, stumbling up onto the side of the road, just in front of the roaring bus.

Then a shriek of brakes, a squeal of tyres and the aeroplane roaring overhead.

An instant later he was knocked over and everything went black.

‘Hey, man, are you okay?’

The voice was coming from far away and HP sat up with a jerk. For a panic-stricken moment he thought he’d gone blind, that he’d got brain-damage or something like that, and was condemned to a life of eternal darkness. But gradually his senses returned and he managed to open his eyes.

‘You okay, man?’ A young man in a uniform that was too big for him was leaning over him, and beside him he saw the faces of a couple of anxious old ladies.

‘You came out of nowhere, man, I hardly had time to brake but I don’t think you got much more than a knock.’

HP didn’t answer, just trying to get up was an effort.

The driver, an immigrant of about thirty or so, gave him a hand.

He did a quick check of his limbs, with satisfactory results.

‘We ought to call an ambulance,’ one of the old ladies trilled. At a guess, she must have been on the bus.

‘… and the police,’ the other one chimed in. ‘That plane …’

‘No ambulance!’ HP interrupted. ‘I’m fine!’

He was, too. Apart from the scratches to his face and hands, and the fact that the wind had been knocked out of him, he felt fine. The last thing he needed right now was a load of nosey cops.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled to the driver. ‘I misjudged it, my bad!’ he managed to say as his voice started to work again. ‘I’m fine, really!’

‘Great!’ the driver said in relief. ‘Maybe we should get going?’

He called out loudly, for the benefit of people still in the bus, ‘No damage done, ladies and gentlemen.’ Then he added, ‘Everyone on board!’ though there were just the two ladies standing anxiously next to him.

As he brushed the grit from HP’s back he whispered:

‘You’re not going to file a complaint, are you, man? I’ve already got one charge for speeding, and I need this job, you know?’

‘No worries!’ HP replied, starting to get a grip again. ‘Don’t worry, just let me off without paying and it’s all forgotten.’

‘No problem, friend!’ The driver smiled in relief and gestured invitingly towards the door of the bus.

‘You should just make it to the train, but it’ll be tight.’

HP nodded and collapsed in the nearest seat.

‘Did you see that plane, man? God, it was flying low!’

13

Mindgames

He could hardly remember the journey home. HP had completely exhausted himself running across the field, and if you add to that his close encounter with the bus, it wasn’t so surprising that he was shattered. He did actually try to stay awake and check to see if he was being followed, but it had been impossible. His eyelids just kept drooping and he dozed off. He ended up all the way out in Älvsjö and had to take the train back to his place.

When he eventually made it back to Slussen he was awake enough to do the secret agent trick to shake off anyone following him. But by the time he reached the little allotment cottage he was wide awake.

His heart was racing and adrenalin was rushing through his body and it was like he was reliving the whole thing again. For a few minutes he actually believed he was about to have a heart attack, that he was going to die out there in the cottage and his ant-eaten corpse wouldn’t be found until auntie showed up to close the place up for winter.

But then his galloping pulse finally calmed down and the fog in his head began to lift.

What in the name of fuck had actually happened?

Had it really happened, IRL, or had he just dreamed it all?

It only took a quick glance in the mirror to write off the dream theory. Filthy, covered in scratches and the bottom of his jeans left in tatters by the sharp stubble in the field. It was a damn good job he hadn’t been wearing shorts!

The pilot of the plane really had been trying to bump him off, and he’d probably have succeeded if he hadn’t made it onto the bus. His pulse started to race again and he felt sick, and it took a few minutes and several litres of water before he felt he was back in control again.

His thoughts were churning wildly in his head, the tumble-dryer in there seemed to hit some sort of hyper-speed.

The Game, the assignments, everything that had happened to him – it was all just a betting game for bored rich bastards?

They’d pressed all his buttons, pushed his boundaries and got him to play along merrily. Was he really so fucking easy to deceive?

The alternative was obviously that Erman had been lying, and had just been talking a load of crap.

Okay, he was clearly a nut, but he didn’t seem like a liar. The hillbilly obviously believed one hundred per cent in what he had said, and most of it also fitted in with HP’s own experiences. The problem was that he just couldn’t take it all in, it was too much.

But if he split the story into two, it worked better. If he bit the rotten apple and accepted that he’d merely been a crazy puppet leaping happily into action whenever the Game Master pulled the right strings, and if he bought all the stuff about betting and the way the Game was set up …

If he did that, then the first part of what Erman had told him pretty much explained everything he had been through.

Even if it stung badly to accept that he had been some sort of court jester in a virtual casino, the explanation made sense, unlike the rest of the story. At least it kept more or less on the right side of crazy.

But he was still having trouble buying the conspiracy theory.

The idea that the Game spanned the whole world, took on all manner of dirty jobs and also had ears and eyes everywhere – that was impossible to take in!

Erman himself had said that he had reached those conclusions all on his own, not based on anything he had seen or experienced directly. Possibly one result of too many lonely hours spent out in that cottage with no contact with the civilized world. You really had to feel sorry for the poor bastard. Even if Erman had practically scared the shit out of him out there in the forest, HP still felt some sort of weird connection with Erman. They actually had quite a lot in common. The Game Master hadn’t exactly been particularly lenient towards either of them. Tracking them down, making them feel special and then, once the Game had had enough of their talents, dropping them like they were yesterday’s news.

So what if Erman had lost some of his marbles? To be honest, he was genuinely fucking grateful that the poor reclusive bastard had helped him along. Opening his eyes, and possibly even giving him a way of accessing the Game.

Whatever, he was feeling considerably calmer now. The nausea had almost gone and he was starting to feel hungry. Some Heinz baked beans was all he managed to find, and he ate them straight from the tin.

What about the plane, then, trying to cut him down? How the hell could you explain that?

No-one had followed him out there, he was absolutely certain of that, so what the fuck had happened?

Okay, in theory it could all have been a mistake. He and Erman were roughly the same height and had the same colour and length of hair. From a distance you might get them mixed up, and from a height of a couple of hundred metres it was probably impossible to tell the difference.

The nutter lived alone out there, so maybe the pilot simply assumed that the person emerging from the trees had to be Erman, – the description would have seemed to match.

That’s what must have happened!

Whoever it was in that plane, he must have had some beef with Erman, not him.

Maybe some angry neighbour or inbred local who had run into the psycho in the Co-op? And decided to scare the shit out of the crazy fucker, Alfred Hitchcock-style when the opportunity suddenly arose. Stuff like that happened sometimes, you just had to take a look at TV3. Christ, there was a whole fucking series about people who did shit like that …!

The more he thought about it, the more likely it sounded. Some sort of sick neighbourhood dispute that had got out of hand. It was a considerably easier to accept that explanation than the alternative.