Chapter Two

When I woke up again I took several minutes to get used to my surroundings as all I could hear was the morning chorus. I also had a rush of memories of growing up as a girl in Phoenix and the people I knew. I now remembered my father, a building consultant, and my mother and her accountancy business.

I now knew my full name, Shirley Annette Mary Wilson. My mother always called me Mary as that was what she wanted me to be called but my father always called me Shirley after his own mother. I, on the other hand, was always known as Annie by my friends and school chums. Not having this girls personality to interrogate, I just thought that she had been a bit silly, if not headstrong, to be known by three names. I decided that I would go by Shirley in future and when I looked at my copy of the job application, it was that which had been written.

I finally got out of bed to find I was wearing pyjamas rather than a nightie and went outside to take my first dump as a woman. I recalled that I was supposed to be an outdoors type and was not surprised when I saw a small shovel and a roll of toilet paper by the camper door. I walked into the bushes and dug a hole before dropping the pants and squatting. I had to smile to myself when it came to using the paper. The routine for snipers was to do one up, one down and one to polish so you don’t leave traces of where you had been. I did use a couple extra this morning as well as an extra one for the second outlet I now had. I buried it all and went back to the camper to get some breakfast.

I found some eggs and bacon in the small fridge and there was some bread in a cupboard so I made myself something to eat on the small stove; all the while working through the memories of Shirley that came to mind. I realised that she, or should I say I now, was not a virgin but had no hang-ups about that. I did a short basin wash and got dressed, starting with cotton panties and a sports bra and ending with a pair of jeans and a light jumper as it was still cool. I found some socks and sneakers and then walked around the camper to take inventory. It was a good one with a pull out roof if needed and there was a mountain bike chained to a rack on the back. In the driving area there was a lambs-wool seat cover and the steering wheel also sported a wool wrap. I located the keys and switched the ignition on to see that there was almost a full tank of gas.

I then saw a Nokia mobile phone plugged in to the cigar lighter on charge. Unplugging it I turned it on, finding that I had six unanswered calls. Checking my purse for my diary I saw that I had got here two days ago and all the calls were yesterday – while I was otherwise engaged. I knew that I was not going to write the truth in the diary so just noted ‘Went for bike ride’ and left it at that. Just then the phone buzzed and, when I answered it, my mother was loudly asking why I had not called her yesterday and why I hadn’t answered her calls. I let her rant without saying anything and then, when she was pausing for breathe I said “My phone was dead and on charge and I went for a bike ride before carrying on.” She then raved about my trip being a wild goose chase and that I would soon be home with my tail between my legs, taking on a secretary position in the accountancy firm and marrying that nice Hector who she thought would make a lovely son-in-law.

I waited until she paused again and said “Mother, I am not coming home, even if the interview is a failure. I am sick and tired of you trying to run my life. I am better than a secretary and Hector just wants to get into my pants so he can put another notch on his bedhead. If I’m not there he will be after Yolande next, just mark my words!” And then I hung up on her.

I then got everything cleaned up and stowed away so that I could continue north. As I got into the driving seat the phone buzzed again and when I answered it I heard my father ask me what I had said to upset my mother so much. I told him that I loved them both and appreciated all they had done for me but it was time I tried to live my own life for a change and use the skills I had. He told me that he loved me too and that he would always be there for me if I needed help. He said that he would try to calm my mother down. He had seen how she was trying to control me but was afraid of stepping in. He said he was glad I had finally snapped but not to tell her that. I said “Thank you, Daddy. I just need to go for this and do my own thing. I do love you both but I am tired of being told what to do and who to date. I am not the society girl my mother wants me to be.”

When I hung up it buzzed again almost immediately and it was Yolande on the other end. At this rate I will never be on the road. She asked me why I didn’t answer her calls yesterday and I gave her the same answer about a bike ride. She then went on “Annie, I wanted to ask you if you minded if I started going out with Hector, seeing that your mother seems to want him as a son-in-law.” I told her that Hector was all hers but she had better be prepared to be dumped. “How can you say that, he is madly in love with me” she said. I asked her if he had got her into his bed yet and she admitted that it may be tonight. Dredging up some memory of a conversation with one of Hectors old girlfriends I said “When you are laid out on his bed, offering yourself to him, just run your fingers up the outer right-hand edge of his bedhead. You will find notches there and no, mine is not one of them and never will be. Now, if you run your fingers up the left-hand end you will find more notches. These are the number of other boys that he has entertained in that same bed with him as the girl. Don’t say I haven’t warned you.” I hung up on her wail of anguish and started the camper.

I got back on the highway heading north and was smiling at the thought of what Hector would do when confronted by a raging Yolande, a girl who normally took no prisoners. I was thinking to myself that this being a girl was far more about relationships than I had ever experienced before. I glanced at myself in the rear vision mirror (which was angled so I could see myself as it was useless to see behind me) and saw that I was really quite pretty, even without make-up, and had shoulder length blonde hair that I realised needed brushing out. This was another thing that the old, bald, me had never needed to do. I pulled over, rummaged in my bag for a brush and remedied the situation before adding a little lipstick and mascara to see a new me emerge.

I took another three days driving north with a night at Pismo Beach and another at Salinas. I left the phone off the whole time so I could properly integrate my Shirley with my old Marvin personality, experiences and knowledge. On the way I read through her diary and when I was connected to power I had a good look at her laptop and the emails it contained. What I found was that Shirley had been a selfish user of her family and friends. She obeyed her mother only when there was something in it for her and the camper was a gift from her father to try and get her out of the house and on her bike.

From her emails I deduced that there was a chap she was bedding regularly at college and that she had actually planned to pick him up during the week to go with him to Mexico and laze in the sunshine smoking weed. She had only applied for the interview because her lecturer had forced her and because it gave her an excuse to load up the camper with her stuff before supposedly setting off for Silicon Valley. If the aliens plan had been carried out as they wanted it would never have worked as she was not committed to a career anyway, even if she was a brilliant programmer. At the campsite at Salinas they had a bonfire of old leaves and branches so I stood by it and tossed the diary in to see it burn. The old Shirley was no more and she now had the determination of a twenty five year veteran.

I arrived at my destination at Sylvan Park where I found a camping site with power and set myself up. Making sure I had locked the camper I got the bike off the rack and cycled out of the park to get something to eat. Back at the camper I set everything out for the morning; a nice dress and the correct underwear and shoes, plus my resume. I took myself to bed early and was kept awake for a while by the unusual roar of traffic on the nearby expressway. Tomorrow would see if the plan would be able to work.

I was up and washed, dressed, made-up and ready to roll after I had closed down the site. If the interview went well or badly I was not coming back here. I drove to Hacker Way and my appointment with a mixture of worry and elation. Here I was, able to drive past my old employer knowing that they will have already replaced me and wondering what would happen to my estate as I had not written a new will since leaving the army and the beneficiary on that one was my mother. I suppose they would track down any distant relatives and share the proceeds out to them.

Arriving at the interview building I parked the camper in the visitor area and locked it before taking a look at myself in my compact mirror and striding up to the main doors. Going in I presented my interview letter to the receptionist who got me a visitor badge and told me to go and sit down as someone would be coming to take me to the office. I sat for ten minutes before a tall dark and handsome man come over and introduced himself as Roland and that he was not only my guide but would also be my interviewer.

Marianne G 2020

Chapter Three

Roland led me into the building, going past empty offices before we walked into a large room with eight people working on computers. They all looked at me up and down and I realised that this was what I would have to get used to as I could see a couple of the guys undressing me in their minds.

Roland said “Guys and girls, this is Shirley and we are going to see if she will fit in with us.” They all said hello and a couple even smiled when they did so. There were four guys and four girls and a couple of the girls looked at me as if I was going to upset the status quo. Years of meetings had given me insight into these situations. Firstly Roland took me into his office and we went through my details and experience. We then went back into the outer room and I was sat in front of a computer screen with the rest of crew standing behind me. Roland told me that I was now going to see a five minute segment of a ‘point and shoot’ game that they were developing. It was provisionally called ‘Swat Raid’ and was supposed to take the gamer into a house of criminals and clear the place out.

I had never seen this type of game and nor had Shirley. All I could do is look at the content on its merit. When they played it I made some mental notes and as it finished Roland asked me what I thought of it. I knew that this was the point where a young girl would blow her chances by telling them something they wanted to hear but my viewing of the clip had given me a chance to tell them the truth, no matter how hard they were going to take it.

I started by asking if all the games on the market were cartoons like this and immediately I sensed a split in the group as four looked sour and the other four smiled. Roland asked me why this was a problem and I told them that I thought graphics had come further than that and, at least, it should have the characters looking a bit more like real people. “And?” he asked. I said that the whole thing was not at all realistic. Having a gun sight in front of you all the time would never happen and that I had counted at least thirty five shots without any loading which was impossible. “And then?” he smiled as he said it, so I said that the corridors that the attacker went down had no furniture which would allow he, or others, a place to shelter. One of the team asked why this was important so I told them that the players would be getting more discerning as time went on and that if they kept churning out something as childish as this they would lose their standing.

I also pointed out that memory and speeds will continue to evolve and that they should be writing for the future, not what was around now. I sat back, fully expecting to be torn to shreds when one guy, who seemed to be the leader of the smiling group, said “What did we tell the upper floors last week and got howled down? Here we have a newbie straight out of college telling some of us something we already knew.” The sour half didn’t say anything and I could see that this was an argument that had been taking place for a while.

Roland asked me what I would do if I had the chance and I told him that there needed to be a move to draw the characters like real people first and then work with motion capture experts to record true life movements. Then there should be a selection process to make the gamer choose a genuine weapon and limit them to the amount of ammunition they could carry. I said that when the shooter has to reload, that’s the time they are vulnerable so it would force the gamer to think about tactics and the use of cover. That way they will capture the market and everyone will make lots of money.

He asked me to go and sit in his office while he spoke to his crew. I could see as I waited that the two groups had a different point of view. I guessed that the sour ones were the old guard who were happy just to continue as they had been while there was a forward thinking section. I wondered how long they had taken to produce the five minutes that I had watched. As I watched I saw that the forward thinkers had achieved some sort of result and they had smiles on their faces. Roland beckoned me to come back out to find out what my future held.

He told me that I could start as soon as I wanted and that I would be working with the four forward thinkers and that we would be moving our operation to a remote site where we could make progress without any interruption. He said that our task would be to redo the clip I had seen but in the new format. We had two months and a good budget and that Geoff, the leader, was in charge. The four in the group included one of the girls and she volunteered to take me through the induction and lead me to the remote site. I was told that there was a small group of cabins there where I could stay for the two months.

I then was properly greeted by Janet, Geoff, Terry and Butch and Janet led me through the building to HR where all my details were entered on the employee data base. They gave me a Motorola flip phone which I was told was standard issue as well as a photo ID on a lanyard and a sticker for the camper. Janet told me that I was unlikely to be coming back to the main office before we had achieved our task and then she got me to drive the camper to stop near the exit and to follow her pink Toyota to the remote site.

She led me to an enclosed group of buildings on the outskirts of the city and we pulled into a car parking area after a guard had let us in. I was shown the cabins and told to pick one and was given the keys to my choice. We then went to the main building where I saw a room filled with computing equipment and another set up as a photographic studio. There was also a kitchen and off-duty room with a TV set. She said she had to get back to the head office to tidy up her workspace and that she would see me here in the morning.

Left to my own devices I turned on one of the computers to find that I had use of the latest in technology and was pleased about that. Back at the camper I turned on the Nokia and called my father at work. When he answered I told him that I had got the job and would be leaving the Nokia turned off for the next few months as I needed to concentrate on the project I had been given. I gave him the number of the Motorola and asked him to keep it to himself and only use it in an emergency. I told him I loved him and to tell my mother that I really loved her as well and that she should not worry about me. He then told me that my mother did not speak about me at all in the last few days and had started to clear out my room. I was not surprised or upset at this as I didn’t intend going there again.

I dismantled the Nokia and put the battery into a separate drawer in the back of the camper, which I then drove close to my new home. When I opened up the cabin I found that it was pretty big with two bedrooms, a kitchen / diner and a comfortable lounge. I had a bit of a shock when I went to transfer my luggage out of the camper and properly hang things up. Shirley had obviously emptied her bedroom as there were loads of clothes, underwear, cosmetics and jewellery. I did find her stash of weed which I put in the bin to be disposed of. I also found a small bag full of money. I guess she had emptied her bank account to fund her elopement. The last thing I did was to take the communication device that the aliens had supplied, with orders to let them know the result of my interview, and press the button to speak to them.

When one answered I spoke in the alien language that I now knew and told it that I was employed to write a new point and shoot game with a project to make it more realistic. It told me that they were very happy and that they would start kidnapping likely teenagers to instil a desire to kill at the right time. It said that I need not use the device unless I had anything important to report, so I put it away in the bottom drawer of the bedside cupboard, under my feminine hygiene products. I then turned on the Motorola and put it on charge.

After clearing the camper of foodstuffs I could see that I needed to get some supplies in so took the camper out to a supermarket that the guard had told me was only a few blocks away. There was also a diner nearby so I treated myself to a cooked dinner before going back to the cabin. As I was driving in the guard told me that he went off duty at eight and the day guy started at six in the morning so I will be effectively locked in for ten hours at night. That was all right by me as I did not intend to go out partying.

That evening I made up the bed with sheets I found in the linen cupboard, put what I had been wearing the last few days into the washer for tomorrow and had a long, hot, shower and hair wash. It did feel good and I topped it off by finding a soft nightie and robe among my things. When I was dry I put these on and sat on the settee brushing my hair and watching some mindless drivel on the TV.

That night I slept well in a decent size bed and realised that I was enjoying being Shirley and that anyone who knew her before would be surprised at the girl she now was. That she was to be the catalyst in changing gamers into killers did not bother me in the slightest; the world deserved all that was coming to it.

Marianne G2020

The gamers among you will see immediately that I have taken a liberty with the gaming technology of that time- it is a science fiction story, after all.

Chapter Four

The next day I was up and dressed in exercise gear when the guard opened up at six, going for a run around the suburb. When I got back to the cabin I got myself some breakfast before showering and dressing in sneakers, jeans and a colourful top. I then went over to the main building and turned everything on, making sure that I filled the coffee maker first.

It wasn’t long before the rest of them arrived and we all made ourselves some coffee and went to sit in the rest room for a meeting. We split the tasks as per our skills. I was told that I would be the overall developer of the look and feel of the game. Janet was the draughtsman in the group and would put together a story-board with me. Butch was a keen photographer as well as a competent draughtsman so would look into motion capture techniques while both Geoff and Terry were the code writers with some years of experience between them.

I told Butch where a studio in Los Angeles was developing motion capture and he went off to call them to see if he could learn something about it. I asked Terry and Geoff if they could go through the programme for the five minute segment and find places where we could insert choices for the gamer to pick his weapons. We also needed a sub-routine that disabled the weapon once he had run out of bullets. I told them that we should have a ‘reload’ command which pulled the sights out of the eye-line for around five seconds, during which time the gamer would be defenceless. I said that we should make it so the weapon needed another command to jack a round into the breech if the gamer had totally used up his bullets. It should allow the weapon to be fired immediately if the reload was done while there was still one in the breech.

Janet and I then took the original segment and ran through it to see where we could improve the look of the action with furniture. We discounted the ‘baddies’ for the moment as this would be looked at later. While we worked she told me that Geoff had been vocal in trying to get this sort of change going for a while but the executives had the idea that the gaming craze would never last so were loath to throw more money at it.

Butch came back to us to say he would be going to Hollywood in the afternoon and would see us in a week or so. After he had left Janet told me that Butch was totally gay and that she was sure he would have fun in tinsel-town. I then got the low-down on the other two guys. Geoff was a married man with a couple of children but had been known to play the field, while Terry was a total hippy and very much into smoking pot but had no desire to move on to anything stronger. The real hunk of the company was Roland, who was well-off, single, and wanted to bed any woman who came his way. I was told that, as a new body in town, I was to expect to be hit on quite soon.

Over the rest of the week we got on very well and when Butch came back he had a new camera with him as well as the software and the spotty suits needed to achieve the effect. Before the end of our first month we had the cartoon characters moving in a very realistic way and the boys were getting very good at tactics, ducking down behind pieces of furniture to reload. We had initially set a maximum total of ten magazines but pulled it back to six as they got better. This would make the game attractive to the thinkers out there.

In the second month we redrew every character as a proper person and used photographs of people in the street as the basis of their faces. We did what we had to do with a week to spare so we added a minute to the start where the gamer arrives at the house with the rest of the Swat Team and the game properly started when the order was given ‘weapons at the ready.” We also spent some time making the hits look real with spraying blood and spatter on walls if the target has one behind him. We were ready on time and all went out for dinner, now a true team and happy with the result.

It had been a good two months. I had learned a lot from watching the others and they had taken my suggestions seriously, especially once they could see the progress we were making. I had also suffered through my first two periods, found my voice and discovered that I really enjoyed being a girl the night that Terry ‘inadvertently’ found himself locked in after eight. He wanted me to share his weed first but I declined. He must have reported that I was all right in bed as Geoff pulled the same stunt a week later. He was disappointed when I told him I didn’t go with married men and made up the bed in the spare room for him.

The following week we had an appointment to show our result to Roland and the executives. We set up a screen and computer in the boardroom and added a rudimentary controller that we had designed should anyone want to see how it really was to play. The company had set its sights on just selling to PC gamers and we all knew that we had to move into a controller system if we were to be part of the future.

When everyone assembled in the boardroom I noticed a guy who joined us who did not seem to fit the executive mould. I asked Janet who he was but she said she had never seen him before. Once everyone was seated Roland took them through the process of the original piece. He said it had taken four months and the last two months had added another five minutes to it. He then played the ten minutes of the set game with the computer doing the playing. At the end of it the company guys looked pleased, along with the ‘sour’ group who did a couple of high-fives. I noticed that the stranger looked remarkably unimpressed.

We then took the point and Geoff explained that we had produced a six minute piece with the original five minutes as the basis. I saw the stranger roll his eyes at that. He then told them that we had written it for PC playing but that we had also set it up for a controller we had developed. The stranger perked up at this. Geoff set the game going and that’s when everything got serious. The secretary taking notes of the meeting slumped off her chair in a dead faint three minutes in and one of the older executives lost his lunch at the five minute mark. I looked at the stranger and he was smiling broadly now. Roland was the first to speak at the end. “I knew you said it would be more realistic but I feel like I have been in a war zone for five minutes. That was fantastic but will it sell?”

The stranger then spoke for the first time “You bet it will sell, that’s a work of art you have there and I want it for my company. I was prepared to walk out of here with nothing to show for my time but I will be happy now to negotiate to buy this for our new platform.” Our group now did our own high-fives and Roland asked us to go to a separate room to wait for him. We sat around discussing what had just happened and wondered who the stranger was. We found out when he was accompanied by Roland and the MD when they joined us. The MD was still looking ashen but the stranger was beaming. We found out that he was a leading executive of Sony US and that he was going to recommend our product to Japan as a game to grace their new platform. He said he was particularly interested that we already had started development on a controller but that his company was already well down that track and that we would be given all the software specs to allow us to create our game to be played on a new release called PlayStation when it was released later in the year.

The MD and Roland told us that we were now in for hard work as we now had to produce a complete game for Sony but we would have a full team at the main building while we would stay at the remote site to take the steps needed to a Swat Raid 2, with whatever tweaks we can come up with. I was already considering the possibility of multi-player gaming but kept my peace.

When the Sony guy left with the MD to talk money Roland said he would take us all out for a meal which was very boisterous and went until late. As it was well after eight, I was given special leave to stay at a city hotel and get myself a nightie on the company, Roland coming with me to check in and giving them the card to record details, telling them that anything I bought was on that card. He couldn’t stay the night but did give me a kiss before thanking me for choosing his company to work for. I then looked in the hotel shop and bought a very sexy satin nightie and gown set that I thought was astronomically priced but they did give me a wonderful night of dreamless sleep.

The next morning I had a good breakfast and took a taxi back to the cabin. In the workroom I met up with the others as they staggered in. We talked about the way we would go in the future and it was decided that we would have to train our new team members in what would be something alien to them before we could get going on our own development. This would mean that the others would need to go into the main office for a few weeks and asked if I minded staying at the cabin. Janet said she would come here and we could develop a storyboard for the new game.

That night I reported our activity to the aliens and they were very happy that we would be having a world-wide release so quickly. They had thought it may have taken up to five more years. They asked me if there was any of the team who would be improved with a bit of brain tweaking in the spaceship and I said I would let them know. I wasn’t sure which one would be suitable so suggested they go looking for someone in Japan who already worked for Sony.

They told me to be outside at ten and I would get an update. They beamed me up and I was given some new alien technology to help me over the next few months. I was also given a little bodily tweaking to wake up in the morning with a slight improvement to my bust and hips. That was a nice gift to be given but it did need me to go shopping as soon as I could.

Marianne G 2020

Chapter Five

Over the next couple of weeks Janet and I developed ‘Swat Raid 2 – Terrorists’. This was to be a similar format to the original game but with a much tougher opponent who had automatic weapons and we also included hostages, some with bombs strapped to them. It was going to be a little harder to code but doable.

We also went into the city and researched public buildings, finding a library that had lots of rooms and corridors. We spoke to the management and they agreed to allow us access after-hours to film the interior. I discussed it with Butch and we created a cart that had four cameras on it; one forward, one each side and one pointing backwards. It would be pushed down a corridor with a small electric motor and the resulting pictures could be synchronised into the game to show an actual place.

Over the next few weeks we filmed the entire building and all of the rooms in this fashion. In the game there would be a point at each intersection where the gamer could select which way they would go. There would also be an option to backtrack. It was going to be several steps higher than the first game which was now on the market to much acclaim from gamers and attacks from the old guard as being too bloodthirsty. Wait until they see the new one as we had added a minus score when the shooter kills a civilian but that gets converted to a plus score if they kill one with a bomb, of course, allowing that the exploding bomb doesn’t kill the shooter and end the game.

It then took us two years to perfect the game into a workable one, during which time Sony sent us the specs of a new platform to be released in 2000, called – you guessed it – Playstation 2. It was decided to save the new game for the new platform which had much better graphics planned. In the meantime we made changes to the original game to include some of the new options and called it Swat Raid – Code Red.

I stayed at the cabin the whole time, swapping the camper for a Jeep so I could go back and forth to the main office. I also bedded Roland several times until a newer and prettier girl came along. In early 1999 I got a message from my father to tell me that my mother had died from a heart attack and I was asked to go to Phoenix for the funeral. I drove the Jeep and stayed at a hotel before attending the church. My father did not recognise me as I was better endowed and far more assured than I was when I had left. I gave him a hug and said that I may not be the girl that had driven away but I still was his daughter – close to the truth!

The funeral was a sombre affair for some but my eyes remained dry. At the wake afterwards I met up with some of my old college friends who seemed to lose interest in me when I didn’t want to listen to the local gossip. The only thing I thought interesting was when they told me that Hector had contracted AIDS and was now very sick. My father gave me a few bits that the original Shirley had left behind as well as some of my mothers’ better jewellery that she had not designated for anyone else. I thanked him and said that I would cherish it. He asked me how I was doing and I told him that I was in a very interesting and responsible job and earning good money so he was happy at that.

Next day I went to the college and sought out my old computer lecturer. He congratulated me on how I looked now but said he was unhappy that I had not completed the course as he could not award me with any marks for graduation. I gave him a copy of the tweaked Swat Raid as well as a copy of the beta version of the new game, telling him that the ‘Gamesmistress’ in the credits was me. I also left him a voucher to redeem on the new PlayStation when it was released. He wrote to me via the company after he played the original game and sent me the completed graduation papers. After he had watched the new game in 2000 he sent me an honours award along with a note to say that his two sons were now addicted to the game.

Later in 1999 the Columbine massacre occurred with thirteen dead and thirty two injured. This was followed by the Atlanta incident with twelve dead and thirteen injured and the aliens were really happy as it looked like the system was working. I could say they were over the moon but that was an everyday occurrence for them in reality. The plan, as far as they were concerned, was coming together. In 2000 the new platform was released and our game was in the top ten. The company had not even bothered to produce a PC version; the sale of over a hundred million of the original Playstation had shown them that we had the inside track on the future. We organised a big gaming party at the library where we had fifty of the towns best gamers trying to sweep the place clean and save as many hostages as they could. No-one was able to complete the task and this alone made the game very popular.

After 2000 we had a couple of hundred working on our games. Butch was now in charge of the section that developed scenery and figures with total reality the goal. Geoff and Terry had over a hundred programmers between them and Janet and I were in charge of R&D for new games. We were also the liaison between the company and Sony so we jetted to Japan on a regular basis. We had set ourselves a mountain to climb as we wanted to produce a game that could be played by multiple gamers at the same time by cable link to each controller as well as working towards a game that could be played on the increasingly available internet. It was a big task but, thankfully, Sony had told us that the next platform was more than five years away.

It was a strange turn of events but the Pentagon got in touch with us in 2002 to ask us if we would like to tender for a contract to supply war games software for simulations and training so I was in a party heading for Washington once again. With my previous knowledge of the military mind I was able to steer our negotiating team into a winning position and we returned to Silicon Valley with a letter of intent from the government, almost as good as a blank cheque. The really good thing about it was that I was working on a new game called ‘Invasion’ which would be played on-line, in real time once the internet caught up with me, and the gamer would take part in the D Day landings and work through France to Berlin (if they lived that long). It would allow the player to take time out as being rested but the game would continue and you may get back into it to find yourself dead or a prisoner. Every player had an individual part and made differences to the outcome as they played. Doing a war game scenario would be similar but with modern equipment. I had around ten years to perfect both.

2000and 2001 was a bit quiet on the random shooting scene, not that there were not many, just that the toll seemed low as far as the aliens were concerned. Santee in 2001 was a stand-out with two dead and thirteen injured but everything else was single digit results. 2002 was better with Grundy and Tucson with a total of seven dead and three injured. The aliens reported that we had a good result in Erfurt, Germany where sixteen died and another ten were injured. Beyond that it was minor events and 2003 and 2004 was much the same. I told the aliens that the gamers were so involved with the game that they did not think about going out to shoot anyone and to be patient as their time would surely come. I was shown right in 2005 with Red Lake and ten dead with seven injured.

My personal life took a bit of a change during this time. Janet was going to Japan and I was tasked with going to Washington. It was on one of these visits that I met Colonel Jaden Clarke (USAF), one of the advisers to the General Staff. Jaden was also on the short list for the space program as he was also a qualified engineer specialising in propulsion systems. We hit it off immediately and were married in 2004. As I was now able to work from home and only go to the office for meetings, we bought a house to be near the Ames Research facility as well as Edwards Air Force Base. It was a blast as when we both were needed in Washington he would fly me in a two seat jet fighter. The only problem being that you could not carry much luggage so we rented an apartment and had our Pentagon clothing there.

One evening, while I was outside our house, talking to the aliens, I asked them if they could impart some knowledge of their propulsion method to someone here and, as they considered that no-one from earth would ever go into deep space, coupled with the fact that some of the items needed were even rare in Alpha Centauri, they agreed to do so.

The following weekend I asked Jaden if he would take me for a flight in his light aircraft and that I would take a picnic if he would land it at one to the remote strips that dotted the Baja. After we had landed I told him that he was going to fly to the moon and he thought we were going to have sex on the blanket but I then contacted the aliens with my communicator and we were both transported to the spaceship. When he woke up I was there to calm him down before he saw the aliens. I told him that one of them would speak to him and when he could understand what it said to nod.

Marianne G 2020

Chapter Six

After a few minutes he nodded and then asked if this was a joke. One alien said “If this is a joke, then what is this” and a window appeared in the wall of the spaceship and a picture of the earth hanging in space appeared. Jaden said “That’s just a photograph!” so the alien made the spaceship move and, in a blink of an eye, we were looking down on Mars where a red dust-storm was raging.

Jaden was halfway between passing out with excitement and fear but held himself together, asking how the ship moved so quickly. He was asked to lie down on a bunk and a device was put over his head and he found out how the spaceship was propelled and how they managed to keep the interior static while hurtling around the universe. When he was allowed to stand up he held me close and told me that he was so glad he had met me as he was now the best propulsion engineer in the world, married to the best programmer in the world.

The aliens then took us on a quick round trip around our planetary system before parking behind the moon and transporting us back to our picnic spot. When we woke up, having to be asleep being one of the side effects of transportation, we had that trip to the moon that he had thought was on offer and thus our family was conceived, twins that were born in 2006. I really had no plans to bring any children into the world that I was helping to create but it was a joyous arrival and I started thinking about keeping them safe. If I had been my old self still I would have been close to sixty five or dead already and the fact that I was still just under thirty, and a wife and mother, made me start to question what I was doing.

I could not change things much as they had gained such a point that I was just there to provide a little push now and then. Our company was now employing thousands and I was now a vice-president of the R&D division of nearly six hundred who were working through the logistics of making multi-player, real-time, real-life experiences happen. As far as the plan went, after Red Lake in 2005, things had gone quiet again but Nickel Mines in October with six dead and five injured made the aliens happy again and Virginia Tech in 2007 with thirty three dead and twenty three injured had them leaping for joy, or whatever the equivalent action for a green blob could be. By this time, Playstation 2 had sold a hundred and fifty five million and number 3 had hit the market with our latest versions of Swat Raid still one of the most purchased games and the Terrorist version outselling almost anything else on the market.

We carried on as usual through to 2009 with the shootings going a little quiet in the USA. I suppose that a Global Financial Crisis made sure everyone was thinking of other things. In Germany there was another one with fifteen killed in Winnenden and then we had a resurgence with Geneva (ten dead and six injured); Binghamton (thirteen dead and four injured) and Fort Hood (fourteen dead and thirty two injured). There was a quiet period now (except for sixty eight dead in Norway) until 2012 when Sandy Hook (twenty seven dead and two injured) and Aurora (twelve dead and seventy injured) made headlines again. The New York Times ran an article which linked our games to the killings and, as a hook, showed a picture of a female silhouette asking “Is the Gamesmistress the Deadliest Woman in America?”

In 2013 my twins were already looking forward to high school (being extremely gifted) and my third arrived as well as Playstation 4. Jaden was now heavily involved with NASA and JPL working on his concepts for an interstellar propulsion drive and getting around some of the things the aliens thought would stump us. He also had a team working on cabin design with the tweaks that he now knew would work. It was all very hush-hush and he did not speak about it much. 2013 also saw the shooting in Washington with twelve dead and eight injured.

Through the 2015 to 2018 period I fell for my fourth child and Jaden made Major General while I became Vice-President of the company. We were living the good life and I was increasingly worried about the world I had helped create. On the shooting side we had Roseburgh School (ten and nine) and San Bernardino with fourteen and twenty four in 2015. 2016 was just the one big one with the Orlando incident that had forty nine dead and fifty eight injured. 2017 had the Rancho Tehama Reserve with six dead and eighteen injured while the shooting at Sutherland Springs saw twenty six dead and twenty injured. 2017 also had the biggest toll so far with the Las Vegas shooting that killed fifty eight and injured a total of eight hundred and fifty with four hundred and twenty two being the direct result of gunfire.

In 2018 my twins were doing well in High School and the next was in primary, all were brilliant students, no doubt due to alien intervention to their parents. The aliens celebrated Stoneman School with seventeen dead and another seventeen injured; Thousand Oaks with twelve dead and ten injured; the Pittsburgh Synagogue with eleven dead and six injured and the Santa Fe School with ten dead and fourteen injured. An incident in the Crimea where twenty died and seventy were injured had the aliens smiling. Well, I think they could be smiling but who knows what a blob smile looks like.

Jaden and I now moved to Pasadena to be close to his work at JPL and the children were all enrolled in schools where the security was high. I still attended company meetings but left the development to others as they were now well into virtual reality and I had absolutely no idea how it worked but was able to see the advantages. 2019 had shootings at El Paso (nineteen dead and another nineteen injured) and Virginia Beach with twelve dead and four injured. The biggest shooting of the year was on the other side of the world where a single gunman killed fifty one and injured forty nine in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The company was making lots of money now with our new game ‘Invasion’ which was an on-going affair with thousands playing it at any one time. We were being accused of destroying teenagers sleep patterns as they did not want to be away from the game as they may come back to find themselves flattened by a tank. I was now a multi-millionairess with my shares in the company making up much of my wealth. So, when I got the news that my father was very ill, I took the children to meet him for the first time. We were in time to see him for a few days and he said that he was extremely happy to see them and that he was proud of me and what I had made of my life. He was just sorry that he had not met my jet fighter husband.

After the funeral there was a lot for me to do to tidy up his estate. I sent the children back home in the company jet for Jaden and the hired help to look after. I stayed in my old home, in the main bedroom as there were no beds in any other rooms. I realised that my father had lived a very lonely life since my mother had died and had a very short period of guilt before realising that I had no true link to him except DNA.

I met up with a few of the old gang and they were in awe of my position and wealth so we did not spend much time together. I got workmen in to bring the house up to sellable condition and we put it on the market. The lawyer who held my fathers’ will told me that I was the sole beneficiary of the estate so was able to sign all the paperwork to sell the home and clear out his bank accounts and investments. Once all that had been achieved I went back to Pasadena and my own family.

Late in 2019 the aliens told me that they had been accelerating the final downfall by ‘kidnapping’ various people who they could see would be world leaders and altering their brains so that they would become the leading aggressors when the word is given. They told me that the count-down had been started in 2016 and that the end would begin in late 2020. I now had real fears for my own family so I told Jaden and we put out a contract for a survival shelter to be built in our back garden with a bonus if it was ready by October 2020. It should have been able to withstand a nuclear blast but we did not have the time to build such a structure.

2020 was a year like no other. We were in a state of urgency to get ourselves safe when the virus started working around the world. We had been stockpiling for our shelter so we just carried on as usual but it did slow the building work down. We did not tell anyone about the impending doom as that would have caused either ridicule or chaos and neither was a situation that would help us. It was strange that the mass killings stopped during the year, probably because there were no collections of people in public, hardly any schools open and any disgruntled sacked workers had no-one left in their old workplace to shoot. The aliens were also happy that people were dying in the tens of thousands all over the world. I personally thought that the easiness that would-be shooters could parade in public with their guns may have just supplied a bit of a dampening effect.

I had an odd communication from the aliens one evening. They told me that they had been kidnapping likely leaders and aggressors but thought that they had picked one who was sick as they were not feeling so good. They told me to hold everything until they contacted me again. A week later there was a report on the television news of a strange green fireball that shot across the sky and the commentators wondered if it may have been secret space junk as no country claimed ownership and there had been no comets or asteroids heading our way.

When I tried the communicator there was no response and I wondered if the fireball could have been three very sick green blobs. I told Jaden about this and he said that this was a relief as the final order would not be given. We agreed that we were still being led, around the world, by a bunch of mad men and hoped that we could live through the time until they died or stepped down. We got in touch with our builders and told them that it was all right if they didn’t finish the shelter by the time scale we had set but would still like it to top end specifications. If nothing else we would end up with a games room like no other.

After a while we both started feeling as if a weight had been lifted from our shoulders. I started to put more time into the company, pushing it down the path of virtual reality for teaching and training purposes and slowly pulling back on the gaming side which was shrinking anyway. I had gone a long way in the company in my twenty five years there; from a newbie to a Vice-President and some said I was a likely successor to the current President.

Jaden was getting on well with his projects. Who knows, one day we may be into deep space ourselves. One thing will be certain; we have been trained so well through simulation shooting games we will be locked and loaded when we do go out there. Any little green men we come across won’t know what hit them!

The end.

Marianne G 2020