Video Game Recruiting (Corporate Marines Book 1) (8 page)

His voice was getting quieter and I had to struggle to hear him. “Everyone in your parents’ generation, and it looks like yours, is more concerned with having a good time than preparing for when they come back. Those big, bad, evil killing robots were sent by some bad-ass aliens. The aliens aren’t dead. We didn’t win the war, Tim. We would have lost if they had kept pushing. What are you doing to prepare for when they come back?”

Grampa wound down after that and just sat there breathing quietly.

I just sat there in shock. I was angry at him for saying those things. My family worked hard and tried hard. The alien thing? I had never really thought about it. I knew the lessons about the invasion. I also knew the reality of star travel, just like everyone else did. Interstellar or intergalactic or whatever else you wanted to call it. Real space warfare was not feasible or possible. I had always just thought that the aliens had their society collapse or something else had happened as they couldn’t afford the war.

But what had happened to them?

I mean, Grampa was right. There were still big parts of the Earth that were recovering, and not everyone got everything to eat that they wanted to, but there had always been people going to bed hungry. Any area that was doing well, and even most of the poor ones, did more of the things that were bad for them more often now.

We hadn’t forgotten.

Then I thought about all the movies and series about the war that I had seen. I guess most of my friends did like to play and most didn’t really believe the aliens were still out there. I even knew a few insane-os that thought the invasion had been run by a government or the Corporation.

We must have sat there for five minutes or more while he recovered and I sat in shock.

After that, we just sort of started talking about normal small-talk stuff. Grades, and how I was getting a part-time job as long as my schoolwork didn’t suffer. He liked hearing about that.

I guess we talked for a long time. I could see it was getting darker outside through the closed blinds.

I remember getting up and saying bye and giving Grampa a hug. I walked down the hall and took the elevator to the parking lot like a robot.

I got into the car and Dad was reading some report while listening to some classic Rammstein. I always preferred the Skretch Death Metal that was popular today, but Rammstein? I had grown up listening to them.

He shut the report down when I got into the car. I could see the snack bag had been destroyed and was sitting on my seat empty.

I just looked at him. He shrugged. I couldn’t stay upset when he had that look on his face.

I sighed as I sat in the car. He had cheered me up with that comic shrug and lost look of his but I guess I didn’t look happy to him.

“So what happened up there, Tim? You were a long time. I was going to come and get you soon as it’s getting late.”

I looked at the reactive window on the car and looked over the heads-up display as the car activated. “Sorry, Dad. You were right; Grampa was in a bad mood and said a lot of bad things. I don’t think I agree with all of them, and I’m still wrapping my view around what he said. After that, we started over and talked a lot about nothing.”

The car was running, but Dad didn’t put it in drive yet. He just looked at me. “I’m sorry; I should have read that better and stayed with you, but I thought Grampa would be better with you. You were always his favourite.”

“It’s okay, Dad. They were just words and I don’t think he really meant them. I think he is just scared that no one remembers the invasion and he thinks everyone forgot it. And, well, he’s also old, so it’s harder to track on stuff, unlike us.”

Dad actually snorted at that. “‘And he’s old.’ Lots of respect there, son of mine.” He reached back and pulled a big snack bag from the floor where he had hidden it and dropped it into my lap. “This should cheer you up! At least a little. Let’s go home.”

As we drove away, I left the bag sitting on my lap unopened. I didn’t have any real appetite.

The things that Grampa had said were a bit hurtful, but they were also wrong.

He was right; we should fortify our solar system so we could respond to threats. But he was wrong because he thought, like a lot of people, that maybe we should just stay in our solar system and develop that. They didn’t see the benefit to leaving, but I kept hearing a history teacher talk to us about empires and how they rise and would fall.

I kept thinking about that on the way home until I fell asleep in the car.

I woke up when we finally got home. I caught the game, and then went to bed. I love Grampa, but he is always such a downer. I was lying there thinking about what he said for half the night.

I mean, yes. The old science-fiction writers had gotten most of it wrong, but I never thought that they were lying to us on purpose. It just worked out that the reality of star travel was different than anyone had thought.

One of my teachers had been really cool about talking about things like that in our social awareness classes. He would look at us and start. “So we have starships that can travel huge distances, but space is so big that we really can’t go that far before we run out of fuel. Plus, our navigating is not top-notch as the new systems have bugs in them, like anything. There are lots of other star systems out there, but only a few in range, and terraforming most of them would bankrupt Earth. The fleets of starships that are huge and would move us anywhere in the universe can’t be built. All the big breakthroughs we were promised? Didn’t happen. Cures for all the diseases that affect the human race? Not there.”

He had paused and looked around the classroom at all of us. The guy was amazing and, we all thought, a little nuts, but he could make good points and keep them interesting. “The first aliens that we met were barely able to communicate with us, and they basically told us it was like this for every alien race out there. There were not big advancements, just smaller advancements over what we currently had. Other aliens were hostile, but there could be no interstellar war.” He had smiled at that. “The last one is a good thing. Because at that time, we were not advanced like Europe. We were more like the subcontinent, and we are still a bit like that today in comparison to everyone else.”

“Now for the reality that everyone out there seemed to miss: We are like the first Europeans trying to send ships out way back when. They can’t go far. We don’t know much, and what we do know is mostly wrong, or at least not completely correct. We have our own huge preconceived notions to work past, and a lot of people thought that we could not be wrong.”

He laughed then, and I didn’t get it for a few years. The words yes, I understood those; it was the meaning behind them and where we had to go that I couldn’t understand. “We
will
eventually make those advances. We
will
expand and explore and grow and one day our starships will travel faster than we think they can today. We will do this one day, but that is generations away, and our problem is that we don’t have the long view in just about anything. So when someone tells you, ‘Science-fiction writers lied!’ smile at them and say, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get there one day!’”

I finally fell asleep, and when I woke up the next day, my life had changed forever.

I went over to Tina’s and said hi to her mom, and she looked so sad. “I’m sorry, Tim. Tina got an offer from the Glentol Corporation yesterday and left right immediately, right after lunch. She was accepted into an advanced studies course and is somewhere in Canada in a full-time school.”

I just stared at her like she was making faces at me. “Well, is she coming home for weekends or, like, holidays?”

Her mom just shook her head no and carried on. “She is going to be spending the next four months in some sort of training program, and if everything works out, she could be doing just about anything in the Corporation anywhere in the world. But they need her to be immersed in the education system as they are covering a lot of technical training and it is very intensive.”

I thanked her and then went home in a daze. I explained things to Mom and then went for a walk.

Mom tried to explain later that if Tina had been chosen for the Corporation’s special schooling, then she could literally end up anywhere in the solar system after she graduated. She tried explaining to me that Tina was smart enough to have taken it, as it meant that her parents would get the benefits. The next day her dad was flying out to a top medical centre for a full medical review. He was back in three weeks and he looked as good as new.

For me, it was like I had lost my best friend and a sister. If I was honest with myself, there was more going on, but I also had a great friend who I cared about.

My grades dropped and the rest of the school year was bad. The counsellors kept suggesting that I could be drugged up and eased over the hard points. My mom glared at them and said no.

I got over it. The hardest part was not knowing if she was doing okay or not and what was going on. But week by week, I got over being abandoned by my best friend.

I was still working out and picked up a giggling girlfriend that was hot, but brainless. Her name was Janice.

My mom let me run a little wild and I got sloppy. Dad was home for a few days and I had snuck Janice in for the night. I guess we weren’t as quiet as I thought because Mom walked in on us.

I got to walk Janice home with my phone on so Mom could track me, and then I headed home. When I got home, Dad was sitting up and he tried to do the dad thing but I was pretty sure that Mom had sorted out what was going to happen. All I really got from Dad was the really short “be responsible” speech and then he headed off to bed.

Mom just sat there watching me while I stood there. She was quick as well. “Janice is a nice, overly friendly girl that’s quite attractive and what any young man would like. Stacked and brainless. Lots of fun for some dates, but don’t marry her. I think she is too slutty as well, but that’s just my opinion.”

I felt like I was getting shorter by the second. She carried on. “Since Tina left, you have been moping around, but you are actually doing better than most people would be doing. I know you need to rebound a bit, and I didn’t come in till you were finished, but I don’t want you getting a girl like Janice pregnant and then marrying her. I want you to rebound and move on. Find the right person—and that is hard—and then live your life. Now it’s late and you are going to bed. Fist bump!”

I gave her a fist bump and then headed off to bed. I was lying there thinking about it and felt creeped out. Mom had let me finish with Janice and then gave me a fist bump over it? Errk. That felt awkward.

The year carried on.

M
ichael Harley Smythe was quite a happy man. After working on the new gaming systems for the last three years he had just been awarded a promotion to regional director. He was wrapping up at the office, which was now a large corner office toward the top of the building that the Corporation maintained in the big city. It was a huge improvement over where he had been just six months ago, with a move to the West Coast and a substantial jump in income as well.

Getting married a year ago hadn’t guaranteed the promotion, but he knew it was what was expected of senior management.

His new wife knew how the game was played, and was at home organizing the caterers so that the event tonight would be perfect. No more than three years in this position and they would be off to the next higher position.

That meant that they were going to work even longer hours, but that was fine. The marriage wasn’t about love, but money and success. Sure, Susan was very attractive and very flexible and motivated the few times that they had sex. They would have to seriously consider kids in the next year or so, but he wasn’t sure how he felt about how that would affect Susan’s body. Everyone checked her out, whether she was dressed to impress or not, so he wanted to maintain that for at least another decade before moving on. Perhaps they could adopt. There were lots of needy children out there and a nanny would make sure that they could maintain the proper lifestyle. At least until the child was old enough for boarding school.

Michael dismissed those long-term plans and started shutting down his system, ensuring that all security was up and running. He had several folders running now that he was keeping completely secured from the net. Those folders were growing every year.

He had a plan. He still hated the whole video game system as a waste of resources and some higher-up’s idiot grand plan. He knew the data coming in was clearly being manipulated by some of the analysts somewhere, and all he had to do was record that.

It was vital for him to keep being positive about the entire experience and support it at every step of the way.

He had to keep collecting raw and processed data. In a few more years, he would have to step forward with whatever data he had that supported what he was saying and point out the weaknesses of the video game evaluation system. Perhaps leaking the information to the media after pushing the reports up the chain would improve the chances of success.

He would get the system shut down, burn whoever had been blocking him and forcing him to stay with this stupid program, and show all the higher powers that he was a man who was careful yet decisive. That he was not simply crying wolf when he saw the initial glitches, but instead collecting data for several years until it became clear that there was a problem with the system and that the inaccuracy was actually someone’s tampering with the system for their own gain. He was taking the longer view for the betterment of the Corporation, and of course, himself.

When the safety of the solar system was on the line, he knew that he was the man to stand up for the people of Earth against those that manipulated everyone for their own wants. He was a man who had raised some red flags about just increasing funding until the glitches and assessment tools were fine-tuned and accurate. Which never happened, interestingly enough.

Michael knew that he would soon climb to a much higher position and could help focus corporate resources on the defence of the system and other projects closer to home.

He had to hurry. He was going to be late coming home again, but his gold-digger wife expected that. They needed to impress the senior vice president of terraforming, and he had some jumped-up young kid with him—a junior vice president of colonization for Ipsworth, the semi-habitable planet that the Corporation had found.

Another waste of resources. Terraforming this solar systems planets made great sense. Colonizing deep space, though? A complete waste of time and resources. Everyone knew that colonization would not work. Why couldn’t they accept that and move on?

Michael closed the door without turning the lights off. Energy conservation was for the slaves downstairs. When the energy transmission stations came fully online, the Earth’s energy problems would be over.

He was in the elevator heading downstairs to the parking lot when the standalone computer in his office came on and page after page of data started flashing across the screen faster than the human eye could track.