Aurora's Rift Read online

  Aurora's Rift

  Emmie Mears

  AURORA'S RIFT

  by M Evan Matyas

  Copyright © 2019 by Emmie Mears

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critic reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Cover: Paper & Sage

  Maigheach Press, UK

  maigheachpress.com

  Subsidiary Rights Information:

  Contact: Sara Megibow at KT Literary, Highlands Ranch, CO

  Printed in the United Kingdom

  Created with Vellum

  For anyone who seeks a home in worlds not our own and for those willing to invest their hearts in the worlds made by others to believe that things can change.

  They can.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Emmie Mears

  One

  My hands feel like I’ve held them on ice for an hour. They’re numb and shivery, and my palms are damp enough that if I wipe them on my grey pants, they’ll leave marks.

  One of the reasons for it is watching me, skepticism still written across his face in seventy-two point font.

  “I still think you should just pitch it yourself,” Ray says. He’s my height, which makes him average and me tall. He’s also wrong.

  “I told you. I pitched an idea last week, and the month before that, and at the turn of the quarter. Everything I come up with, Cooke just flat out stonewalls. If you don’t believe that’s because of—”

  “It’s not that I don’t think his grudge exists, Evie, it’s just that this is—”

  “Childish and blocking my career advancement? Tell him that.”

  He glances to his left, at the glass wall that’ll enclose us in just a few minutes.

  “Look,” I say. “Just do this one thing. If I’m wrong and they shoot you down, you’ll only be dealing with a third of the no he’s given me this year, and I think you can cope with that.”

  “Right.” Ray’s face is haunted by his five o’clock shadow, which for him I think shows up about six hours early every day. “What if they do go for it?”

  “Then tell them it’s my idea and that we decided you’d be the one to pitch it after we workshopped it together.” I can live with that.

  Ray’s the only coworker I trust enough to hand this to, which isn’t saying much for the rest of them, and truthfully doesn’t say much about Ray, either. But he doesn’t need a shot at a promotion. He’s got a trust fund and was a legacy hire. He’ll work his way up in no time. This is his chance to wield that unearned account balance to help someone who’s actually had to fight for every promotion. I’ve earned this much at Horizon, and if Cooke didn’t act like I’d dosed him with a sedative every time I pitched something only to snatch up the same goddamn idea the second anyone else said it, I’d be in a corner suite by now.

  The CEOs have been hammering us to come up with a way to entice more people to play our MMORPG Credence of Forsythia, since our rival company essentially locked us out of our own market two years ago when they exploded onto the virtual reality fantasy role-playing scene with the force of several dozen atomic bombs, nuking the rest of our efforts into oblivion. With a single player game, no less. We’ve been playing catch up ever since, but why they keep telling us to kick a horse as dead as Credence, I’ve got no fucking clue.

  It’s my job, though, and if Ray and I pull this off, there should be a promotion in it. No one’s tried my idea yet. Not even Nebula, the rival company that left us in their dust.

  Ray drums his fingers against his thigh, and I can almost see the pros and cons he’s clearly scribbling on the inside of his eyeballs.

  After a long moment, he nods. “Okay, dude. He should listen to you, though.”

  I shrug, uncomfortable. “I know. But apparently my voice isn’t loud enough.”

  “I’ve got your back.”

  The first half of the meeting goes by in its usual boring blur of scribbles on notepads and tablets, styluses gliding on glass, and the click-click-click of someone at the far end of the room who hasn’t turned off the keystroke sound effects on their touchscreen.

  “Next on the agenda, marketing. Go.” My boss, Sam Cooke, so much of an asshole that his lips pucker to the point that he’s got Resting Sphincter Face.

  He’s looking bored.

  I kick Ray under the table.

  “Uh, I’ve got something, Mr. Cooke,” he says. “We pour most of our marketing budget into just plastering ads around the internet, which is clearly not having the effect we want it to. We can crunch target audience demographics all day, but so many people are using blockers that we’re basically screaming into the abyss.”

  A few of the crunchers in question immediately turn sharp eyes on Ray, looking surly to have their usefulness called into question.

  “Thank you for summing up our predicament,” Cooke says, sounding anything but thankful.

  Ray rushes on. “What we need is a way to keep up with AI we don’t have. No one can simulate human intelligence yet, not really. Nebula cracked something, but we can one-up them if we counter with something radical.”

  “How radical?” Cooke still looks bored, but now he looks like he’s trying to look bored to disguise Ray having piqued his interest. He fiddles with one manicured thumbnail.

  “Put five percent of the marketing budget toward hiring and training full time human intelligence to play Credence as internal intelligence. In-game. They work here, on site, and they give new players an experience no other game can match—real people whose reactions players can’t anticipate, whose agendas transcend the usual early game tutorials. NPCs who not only guide player experience, but who bring the world to life and who are, at their heart, invested players. Then we build on that, putting people in key points throughout the questline. Our people will create their own characters and move within the world. They won’t always be present, because they’ll have to log out.” Ray’s gaining momentum now, sounding confident. “They’ll make the world feel fluid, and they’ll push players to have real interactions with the world and the people we populate it with beyond anything AI can offer. And to the people we hire, we’ll be offering a truly unique job opportunity—to make their living playing a role they already want to play. As long as we do it well, it’ll create a hunger not just to play Credence of Forsythia, but to find out what makes it different.”

  My scalp tingles, because Cooke’s not disguising his interest now. He taps one finger on the lacquered conference table an inch away from his thousand dollar gold-plated pen. He’s going to go for it.

  “This,” Cooke says. He picks up the pen and point
s one gleaming end at Ray. “This is what I’ve been asking for. Something new. Innovative. If you can’t create an AI to rival your rival, use actual, real, human intelligence. Brilliant, Halstrom. Get me a P and L on your idea.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Ray says. “I’ve—we’ve been working on this for a while. Evie helped me put this together.”

  His words don’t quite process in time for Cooke to speak again.

  “Great. Vice president of marketing,” he says suddenly. “You’re due a promotion. See me in my office. Make an appointment with my assistant.”

  Cooke stands, and Ray’s words are only just clicking in my head. Evie helped me put this together.

  “Sir—” Ray says, casting an anguished look at me as if struggling to put together what just happened as much as I am. “But Evie—”

  “Clearly you’ll need an assistant director. She can report to you.”

  “Sir, I am already a director of marketing,” I say, the words somehow coming out clear in spite of the rage I can feel creeping up the skin of my chest in the mottled red blush that always gives me away. I haven’t been an assistant director for three years. Did he just say he wants to promote Ray to VP and demote me in the process?

  “Even so,” Cooke says. “Good work, team.”

  No one else in the room is speaking, and when I look around for someone to show even the tiniest hint of sympathy, no one will meet my eyes. They all saw what just happened.

  The silence feels all the louder when Cooke brusquely strides out of the room, leaving a vacuum of power. After a moment, the knots of people push back their chairs to head back to their respective departments, very carefully avoiding me and Ray both until he and I are the only two people left in the conference room.

  “You said you’d credit me for thinking this up,” I blurt out. “I helped? What the fuck?”

  “I’m sorry. I panicked. He never responds like that—”

  “You’re sorry? So what are you going to do, go make that appointment and tell him the truth?”

  Ray doesn’t say anything for a moment, and I know. I know, the little weasely piece of shit. He’s going to do no such thing. An obnoxious little voice tells me this is my own fault, that I should have just pitched it myself, but that voice is immediately bulldozed by the much stronger knowledge that Cooke would have stayed bored, tuning out the moment I opened my mouth.

  There’s nothing I hate more than feeling helpless.

  I turn toward the door without waiting for whatever Ray is going to say.

  Just when I reach it, he speaks.

  “Evie,” Ray says. “I’m sorry—I can’t turn this down. I work really hard here.”

  There is nothing—not a goddamn thing—I can do in this moment that’ll come close to satisfying the fury I can feel in every pore on my skin. Five years of this. Five fucking years. It’s only Tuesday, which means a full week ahead, and that means coming back in next Monday to what, be Ray’s assistant? His assistant? I trained the spoiled little shit, for fuck’s sake.

  He works hard? He’s a legacy hire. He had barely-acceptable grades and mediocre references. I know because I interviewed the little turd. I got overruled when I said we had a better candidate. And he’s been okay to work with, until now.

  Before I was in marketing, I did design, but the industry got so cutthroat that I couldn’t keep it up if I wanted to salvage any love I had for my craft. Figured I might as well sell my soul and go where the money was.

  Five years here, slinging shit for Sam “Ass Face” Cooke.

  Ray is saying something behind me, but I don’t have any interest in his justifications or his apologies. He got hired here because his uncle’s the CFO. He doesn’t need this promotion. Hell, he technically doesn’t even need to work.

  And right at this exact moment, I realize that neither do I, though not nearly on the same scale as Ray. I don’t have to work. I went where the money was, and I made some money.

  I don’t have to work.

  At least not here, and at least not for a few months with the savings I’ve squirreled away.

  I go to my office, type out a quick letter before I lose my nerve, shove my vinyl figures and the framed picture of my long-gone dog into my bag, and I lock the office behind me.

  I make one stop on the third floor at Human Resources and hand my resignation to the first person I see. He reads it and squawks something I don’t hear, because I’m already halfway back to the elevator bank.

  One perk of living in an at-will employment state. No requirement of giving notice. Even my contract says I can leave (or get fired) at any moment without reprisal. And they’re not going to give me any kind of reference I want to have anyway. I’ll let my numbers speak for themselves.

  But not today. Not this week, either.

  The moment I step outside the doors of Horizon’s compound, air fills my lungs like life itself returning.

  Five years of working sixty hours in a light week. A hundred on the worse ones. I haven’t had a social life since my mid-twenties. Hell, my thirtieth birthday was spent monitoring clickthroughs on a grueling ad campaign just three months ago.

  I walk on legs that slowly transition from feeling like jelly to feeling like actual legs.

  The light rail station is cheerful, clean, sleek. No one really drives these days—side effect of the drastic measures we had to take to curb climate change before we lost our planet for good. Public transportation for all except those wealthy enough to pay the tariffs, like Cooke.

  And Ray, who drives a Z-class roadster he keeps a model of on his desk.

  God, why did I trust him?

  The train whirrs up to the platform, and I reflexively step back from the door to let arrivals off. They all scurry past, in a hurry to get back to Horizon to finish their day.

  There’s one other person on the platform waiting to get on the train, and he nods to me to go first as soon as the few folks returning from lunch meetings have exited.

  He’s a little taller than me, with black hair and grey eyes and a tan that looks real enough. And I know him. Last time I saw him was at the Pantheon convention on a panel, and he gave Sam Cooke so much shit he might as well have dumped a barge of manure on the man, cutting through Cooke’s brainless corporate buzz-speak with charm and warmth and actual gaming experience.

  Zachariah Buchanan, if I’m not mistaken. Recognizing him startles me out of my muttered thank you. He’s the founder of Nebula, Horizon’s industry arch enemy and one of the wealthiest people in the country. What’s he doing here? I can’t help the glance I take back at Horizon’s compound across the green, all clean white lines and shining glass.

  Zachariah Buchanan gives me a wry smile at my obvious surprise. Then he glances down and looks at the bag in my hand. “Last day?”

  “Apparently,” I say. The word comes out with more venom than I mean it to, and I wince. “Sorry. I quit.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he says. “I feel soiled after twenty minutes in the place.”

  Then he winces as if he didn’t mean to say that out loud. He scrubs a hand through his close-cut hair.

  We’re alone in the train car except for a pair of interns at the opposite end, and I sit, pretending not to notice the awkward silence. To my surprise, Zachariah sits across the aisle from me. The founder of Nebula rides the light rail. Will wonders never cease?

  “Yeah, well,” I say to him finally because I have no idea what to say.

  “So you quit, and I’m guessing you did that on impulse. Must have had a cause. Want to talk about it?”

  “Talking about it might breach my newly severed contract’s fraternization clause,” I tell him, feeling my lips twist into what’s probably a harsh but wobbly half smile. “But suffice it to say that I no longer felt my skills were appropriately valued. Or noticed at all whatsoever.”

  “That is…unsurprising.” Zachariah reaches in his pocket and pulls out a shiny business card case. He hands me one. It’s blue and purple and g
reen, misty clouds on a starry background with the Nebula logo in the corner and what appears to be his personal email address and cell number. “If you find yourself in need of new employment.”

  Whoa. I tuck it into my pocket and reach out to shake his hand. “Evie Winterbourne.”

  He shakes my hand as firmly as I shake his, unlike Sam Cooke’s dead fish handshake, which I loathed from the first time I met the man.

  I still have my own business cards, and I give Zachariah a sardonic quirk of my lips as I hand him one. Without even looking at it, though, he surprises me again.

  “Wait, Winterbourne? Were you at Pantheon last year?” He frowns as if trying to place my name.

  “Yes, but our paths definitely did not cross,” I say. “Other than me seeing you on that panel owning Cooke into the next eon.”

  He drums my card against his knee. He’s in simple jeans and a black t-shirt with a black blazer over it. Pretty casual for a meeting with Cooke, if that’s why he was at Horizon, which it probably was.

  “Wait, you did the art for Lost Lands of the Sacred,” he says suddenly. “Fucking stunner of a game, that.”

  “I—yeah, that was me, but—”

  “Your team got robbed.”

  “Yeah, I know.” It was the last straw for me and why I took the job at Horizon in the first place. Lead dev fucked us all out of credit and sold the rights to the game to one of the Big Two companies of the day, leaving himself a millionaire and the rest of us with squat.

  And did I mention he was my boyfriend when he did that to me? Yeah.