The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble

In spite of this there was something about her that unsettled him. A vague feeling that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. As if there was something there, something she was hiding behind the rigidly maintained façade and was desperate not to reveal.

He hadn’t made any notes about this at her recruitment, so either it had become more obvious, or else he was simply more attentive than he had been last year. But he got the impression that he had picked up a small, almost imperceptible fracture in her otherwise polished and professional exterior.

He couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was all just a façade, some sort of game where the packaging didn’t quite match the contents. But on the other hand he could be wrong. Psychology was hardly an exact science, after all.

He fetched a mug of coffee and sat down at his computer. When it came down to it, Rebecca Normén had demonstrated that she was more than capable of handling every aspect of a critical situation, so what else was there to say?

Right now she was the bosses’ favourite, and it would take more than a few vague suspicions on his part to get them to change their minds. If he couldn’t back up his feeling with facts, he would just have to let it go. After all, this concerned another person’s career, and he of all people ought to know that gut instincts were way down the priority list within the police service.

Everyone has their secrets, so why should Rebecca Normén be any different? he thought as he settled to write his report.

Welcome to the Game, HP!

On this page you will be informed about the

basic rules and regulations for participants.

I recommend that you read them carefully and think things over before deciding whether or not you wish to continue.

Do you understand?

Yes

No

Yep, he understood all right, rules, blah blah blah, but – more importantly – more information. Just what he needed.

As soon as he got home to his little two-room flat on the steeply stepped alleyway of Maria Trappgränd, he threw all the windows wide open in a vain attempt to stir up the stale air inside. The bitter coffee from the computer shop was still bubbling in his stomach and it dawned on him that he hadn’t actually eaten anything since the burger he gulped down when he was drunk the previous night. And he was desperate for a cigarette. A crumpled, half-full packet of Marlboros that he found under the sofa after a bit of a search solved the latter problem, and he took a couple of deep drags and relaxed. Sweet!

With the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth he mounted a raid on the fridge, but without any great expectations. Apart from a couple of cans of beer it offered thin pickings, but the ice-covered freezer compartment actually managed to produce a frost-damaged Gorby pie. He zapped the little delicacy in the microwave and settled down at the kitchen table, fiddling with the mobile and trying not to burn his mouth on the melted cheese.

It was all pretty straightforward. Even though the touchscreen was fairly large, there were only five icons. Phone, calendar, email, internet, and the one he was after – ‘The Game’.

He clicked Yes and a new text appeared instantly.

Welcome to a new dimension of gaming, a world where reality is a game and the Game reality.

Welcome to the most intense gaming experience in the world!

Welcome to the Game!

He couldn’t help smiling at the bombastic tone, then ran his finger across the screen to scroll down to the next piece of text.

Definitions

Participants in the Game are known as Players and are hand-picked after a careful selection process.

Every Player is given various Assignments by the Game Master who is the person who directs the Game.

The Assignments, if carried out correctly, result in a number of Points, as well as a matching quantity of American dollars which will be paid into an account to which the Player has free access.

All Assignments are documented by the Players themselves with the help of the handheld unit, and in specific instances also by Functionaries or other Players. All visual material is the exclusive property of the Game and will be presented at regular intervals in edited form together with the league table on the High Score Page.

At the end of each round of the Game a Winner will be declared, and they will receive a Reward.

HP frowned. If this was a joke, then it was a bloody convincing one.

So had he been selected to take part in whatever it was called … a live game or something? It was all a bit too close to those ridiculous historical re-enactments, really, people on Gotland dancing about in homemade chainmail costumes. Or kids dressing up as vampires with plastic fangs and capes. How the hell had he got involved in something like this?

The page had two links. He clicked the first, marked Rules of the Game:

Rules of the Game

To guarantee a satisfactory experience for all parties, there must be a set of Rules, as in all games.

These Rules are absolute and must not

under any circumstances be broken.

Rule 1: Never talk to anyone outside

the Game Community about the Game.

Rule 2: The Game Master directs the Game,

allocates assignments, rewards, and – if necessary – punishments.

The Game Master’s authority is absolute, all

decisions must be obeyed and there is no right of appeal.

Consequences

Breaching or disobeying the Rules of The Game will result in immediate Disqualification and Expulsion.

HP sighed and pulled out another Marlboro, lit it and took a deep drag. So far he was no wiser than he had been when he started. He was clearly being invited to take part in some sort of weird game that seemed to take place out in the real world. But why him?

Not that he didn’t like gaming, he had Counterstrike and World of Warcraft on his computer, and obviously Guitar Hero on his Playstation. But they didn’t make you run around town like a fucking Duracell bunny. But on the other hand, there was that bit about money and rewards …

Getting paid to play games, he could definitely live with that. Professional gaming was actually something he’d looked at before. But how the hell could they know that?

He clicked the second link. Just like the heading said, it contained something that looked like a high score table. In the left-hand margin was a series of numbers, which at a guess represented different players. At the top was someone called ‘58’, who had evidently managed to scrape together more than five thousand points by completing seven tasks.

If every point was the equivalent of one American dollar, as the earlier page suggested, then number fifty-eight had earned something like forty thousand Swedish kronor, presumably tax-free, just by playing a game. Not bad, not bad at all in fact! His interest was definitely piqued.

So what did he have to do to get his share of the dosh? He scrolled down through the list of high scores, right to the bottom, where, surrounded by a number of other players on one hundred points, he found number one-two-eight. The same number as on the back of his phone. He clicked the little icon of a reel of film alongside the number. A new window opened up, showing a shaky film sequence, and he heard his own voice crackle through the phone’s little speaker:

‘Tell Manga … still a carpet-lick … bastard!’

The picture bounced up and down. Train doors, tarmac, then a shaky sequence of some steps and a bit of Rörstrandsgatan. Then the whole sequence over again, but this time filmed from the side with considerably better focus and less shaking, and once again he saw himself steal the umbrella and jump out of the carriage. From the angle of the shot, it had been recorded either by the attractive young woman in training gear, or one of the thirty-somethings. Christ, the look of surprise on the man’s face when he took the umbrella was priceless! He clicked to repeat the film and watched it again.

First his own recording, then the one taken anonymously. It was almost like reliving it, but with all the details more defined. The look of surprise on the young girls’ faces, the drunk jumping when HP started shouting, the shocked reaction of the man in the coat, which seemed to suggest that he had no idea what was going on. This was massive, totally massive!

HP had nicked stuff before, it wasn’t that … It was actually bloody cool to be able to watch it again, even if he didn’t look quite as slick as he’d imagined. It was like getting a repeat of the adrenalin rush, just with more time to enjoy the finer nuances.

After a while he tried a button marked ‘mix’ and to his delight discovered he could watch the two sequences of clips alongside each other, his own on the left and the other one to the right, perfectly synchronized, the entire event seen from two different angles.

When he had watched the film for the fifth time he found that his heart was thudding with excitement.

4

Safe or all in?

She needed new clothes. Even though the blood would probably come out if they were dry-cleaned, she had thrown her jacket and trousers in the nearest bin as soon as she got them back from Forensics.

Runeberg had understood.

‘Make sure you get a receipt and we’ll sort it out, Normén,’ he had said, so she had just spent the past hour or so in the outfitters in Östermalm that supplied their uniforms. Getting measured and trying things on, marks in white chalk and pins. It felt like a luxury to be able to try on clothes like this, and in work-time as well.

The sales assistant knew what she was doing. One size larger than normal gave enough space for the bulletproof vest and the equipment carried on their belts. Just shorten the arms a bit and take in the shoulders.

The uniform had to sit well without getting in the way. It wasn’t supposed to look like a hand-me-down.

Runeberg may have told her to take the rest of the day off, but according to the rota she was supposed to be working that afternoon. She didn’t have any other plans so it made sense to get the uniform sorted straight away.

Runeberg was okay. If you could just look past his blokey attitude he was a decent boss, possibly even one of the best she’d had. And decent bosses didn’t exactly grow on trees in the force. Length of service and connections were often more important than competence.

Even so, she liked being a police officer, she really liked it. The feeling of doing something important, meaningful. Doing something for society.

But ‘Protect, help, see that justice is done’ was only one aspect of what attracted her to working in the police. Another important aspect was the feeling of being chosen. Someone who had been hand-picked more than once in the course of her career, who had passed countless tests and exams and had shown that she was made of the right stuff.

As a woman within the force it wasn’t enough to pass the entrance exam. You also had to prove that you weren’t a UW – a uniformed witness who was no use at all when things kicked off. You had to prove you could deal with critical situations on your own.

That was why the business with the security guard at Rosenbad still annoyed her. Without the car she had been stuck, felt almost paralysed, and if their attackers had chosen to carry on they would have been in a tricky situation. She couldn’t quite shake the insidious thought that it was the guard on the door who had saved the day rather than her. That she didn’t really deserve her place in the Alpha group.

Maybe it sounded like something from the Stone Age, but the police force was to a great extent still run according to male rules. Regardless of anything that equal-rights legislation might have to say about the percentage of women in the force, 95 percent of all criminals were men. And if a woman wanted to join in properly and not tuck herself away on some cosy office chair the moment the opportunity arose, you had to show that you had what it took. That you weren’t bothered about getting filthy and beaten up. She had no problem whatsoever with that, but it had been hard learning to take control of the situation and hit back. But a number of years on patrol had certainly helped.

She had read somewhere that the body replaces practically all of its cells over a seven-year period. Even if that sounded made up, the thought appealed to her, that she was literally a new person after everything that had happened. That she was a different, much better person than she had been then.

The identity she had assumed with the job played a large part in that change.

She was proud of her job, and the rectangular police badge that she took everywhere with her, no matter where she was. Its metal shape had even left an impression on the outside of the pocket of her jeans, just like the little tubs of chewing tobacco did with ice-hockey lads. She couldn’t really explain the feeling she got when she held it out and introduced herself as ‘Normén, Police’. She couldn’t imagine life without it. So why didn’t she feel completely happy?

Are you really sure you want to Play, HP?

Hell yeah, he was sure. Absolutely certain! It was a complete no-brainer. Getting paid for running around the city and mucking about – who the fuck wouldn’t want to be part of something like that?

And then there was the whole thing about being filmed.

He couldn’t really explain why, but seeing himself on film like that was … exciting, in the absence of a better word. Not exciting in a sex way, no, this was a completely different feeling. Or was it?

But it wasn’t really the thing about watching himself do cool stuff from loads of different angles that appealed most. Even if he still liked the idea, the initial intensity of the buzz he got when he relived the theft had had time to fade a bit. Sure, he wasn’t about to deny that it still made his pulse go up when he watched it over again, but it was no longer top of the list.

No, what appealed to him even more was the discovery that there were other people out there who could see what he was doing, watching his clips and even rating his performance.

He hadn’t really sussed what was going on the first time he was on the site, but after a couple of days of messing about and checking out the various functions he had a better grasp of what it was all about.

To start with, the Game wasn’t live in the way he had thought at first; it was more like an Alternate Reality Game. A sort of mixture of computer game and reality where the two worlds merged together, according to the definition in Wikipedia, and so far that description seemed to fit pretty well.

But apart from the participants there were a load of other people watching. An audience who, if he understood correctly, even paid to be allowed to watch!

It was pretty logical, really, because why else would you set up something so advanced if you weren’t going to make some money from it? Where else would they get all the dollars that were paid out in prize money and paid for at least one hundred and twenty-eight pretty advanced mobile phones with built-in webcams?

Whatever, these viewers could watch, rate and comment on what the participants were doing. He’d already got a couple of comments himself: ‘Cool man!’, ‘Like the shouting!’ and ‘Nice start, adding you to my favourites’ had all been added to the little comment section attached to each player’s high score ranking. His viewers had given him an average of three stars out of five. Total strangers who had clicked on him, watched and liked what they saw. Giving him cred for what he’d done. It was just so fucking cool!

The comments he’d got were gnat’s piss compared to what people had written about number fifty-eight, who was still at the top of the list. ‘58 For The Win!’, ‘You rule’ and ‘58 rocks!!!’, as well as a shitload of smileys and other stuff which meant that fifty-eight’s comments section was actually several pages long. Five stars out of five, top marks, in other words. Cred and love from a whole cyberworld, what a fucking kick that must be!

But HP didn’t actually know what Mr Five-Eight had done to deserve all the praise. As a Player he could only see his own clips. A shame, but maybe there would be a way round that later on … There was one exception, though. At the top of the page, just above the leader-board, was a link to what was called ‘Mission of the Week’, where they evidently posted a successful task for everyone to see.

This week the clip was of Player 27 who was currently in fourth place. HP had watched it at least twenty times already. The clip showed a bloke in a balaclava smashing the windscreen of what looked like an American police car, then emptying a foam fire-extinguisher into the vehicle. The whole thing was filmed on the mobile fixed to twenty-seven’s chest, but also by another cameraman standing further away. What made the mission extra cool was it took place in broad daylight, in the middle of an unidentified big city with a load of stuffy pedestrians around the car. The clip had also been professionally edited and had its own soundtrack, Public Enemy’s Fight the Power.

‘Got to give us what we want

Gotta give us what we need …

We got to fight the powers that be!’

The icing on the cake was when the cops got back from the doughnut shop or wherever they’d been and discovered their ride had been wrecked. All of it carefully documented by the cameraman who even managed to catch some of the swearing before he had to break off and run for his life.

Praise was raining down on twenty-seven’s comments section and HP could only agree with it. It was totally fucking cool, and pretty damn ballsy too! Maybe a bit too adventurous for him, but what the hell? On the other hand, it had to be less risky to fuck with the cops in Sweden than in the States. Over there you could easily get your head blown off if you were unlucky, and that sort of thing didn’t happen much here at home, at least not very often.

‘Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?’ Bang, bang!

He finished his Dirty Harry imitation in front of the steamed-up bathroom mirror, holstered his finger, then dutifully ran a comb a couple of times through his long, greasy hair and inspected the results with satisfaction as he blinked at his reflection.

‘Looking good, Louis!

Feeling good, Billy-Ray!’

A quick check of his pockets. Cash – check, cigs – check, keys – check. He picked up the mobile on his way out. It was time to play. Game on!

She had grabbed a coffee in the Sture Gallery, then cruised quickly past all the twenty-year-olds with daddy’s credit card crowding round the boutiques along Biblioteksgatan, then turned to head along Hamngatan towards the main underground station at T-Centralen. Even though it was the height of the holiday season, the Friday rush-hour traffic was almost at a standstill and the exhaust fumes were mixing with the summer smells of tarmac, cigarette smoke and food.

It was almost evening but she still had a couple of hours of her shift left. She had been planning to go to the gym, but she didn’t really feel like it. Even if the incident on the quayside was more than twenty-four hours ago her body still felt sluggish. Almost as if the adrenalin rush had left her with a hangover. But if these were the after-effects that Anderberg had warned her about, she could certainly put up with them.

She decided to head off towards the block housing Police Headquarters anyway. Her occupational injury form would be waiting in her pigeon-hole and it made sense to get that out of the way before she started with the Alpha group. So, the blue underground line to Rådhuset.

She headed diagonally across Sergels torg towards the entrance to the underground station.

In spite of all manner of schemes from the police and social services, she noted that the junkies were still dutifully at work in their market-place around the doors. Not even the latest well-lit renovation had scared them away and these days their presence didn’t seem to surprise anyone, even the tourists ignored them.

It was as if the poor bastards had become a fixed element of the urban scene. Whatever, it was nice to get into the cool of the station concourse.

She showed her police badge at the turnstile and took the escalator down towards the blue line.

The escalator up towards T-Centralen. He latched onto a mother with young children and snuck through the open gate for pushchairs, just as he had done on his way in. Then quickly across the station concourse and out through the doors to Sergels torg.

Even though it was evening the heat hit him like a wall. A couple of junkies were slumped drowsily under the shelter of the roof, it looked like they’d had thin pickings that day. Presumably the dealers went on holiday as well? HP thought he recognized one of them and nodded curtly as he went past, but the look in the bloke’s eyes was so glassy that he probably couldn’t see further than the end of his nose. Smack was a load of fucking shit, no doubt about that. He was more than happy with Miss Mary Jane. It was an absolute joke that the law made no distinction. No-one had ever overdosed on dope as far as he was aware.

He walked across the uncovered part of the square, then went down the slope to the underground shopping level, and a few minutes later he was standing in front of the doors with the golden handles.

A quick check of his watch. 18:43. He was two minutes early.

He wasn’t used to wearing a watch.

When he’d received his instructions and realized that he’d need a watch, he’d spent at least half an hour hunting through his boxes. Eventually he had managed to dig out a shabby old Casio which had to be at least ten years old, but somehow it was still working. He had called the speaking clock and to his surprise the number still worked: ‘At the third stroke it will be eighteen forty-five precisely …’

The flashing LED light on the mobile interrupted his thoughts. He opened the new message expectantly.

Welcome to your second assignment, HP!

Today’s mission, if you choose to accept it,

is worth 400 points.

Do you want to continue?

He clicked Yes at once.

Four hundred points, almost three thousand kronor, and a serious jump from the swamp at the bottom of the list of hundred-pointers.

Excellent!

Take the lift up to the book shop.

Don’t forget to carry the phone with the camera facing out.

Press the button below when you’re in position.

An icon marked ‘Ready’ appeared at the bottom of the screen.

HP discovered that the palms of his hands were already clammy with excitement. This was seriously fucking cool!

He was a secret agent, a man on a mission. ‘Pettersson, Henrik Pettersson.’

He opened the doors, went down the escalator, cruised through the mere mortals looking at espresso machines and ridiculously overpriced chocolate, turned the corner to the lobby where the lifts were and pressed the up button. A couple of minutes later he got out on floor 3, turning his face away from the security camera out of habit and gliding in among the bookcases.

He clicked on ‘Ready’.

The reply came at once.

Follow the White Rabbit!