Now that the Jerusalem Dungeon had been fully explored, more difficult dungeons were unlocked for the players. However, more importantly, the First National Expansion Act was a great success in the real world. With only two months left until the by-election, it seemed that everything was coming into place. GDP had increased by a further 8.1% after the World’s Egg was broken, thanks to advances in industry through Augmented Reality applications. Auxiliary devices such as phones and computers were slowly becoming a thing of the past. This great growth was achieved in a short time despite the fact that only a few dozen individuals were able to beat the White Dragon since the Egg’s destruction. Of course, more than half of them never returned to the game since they had already “made it” in the real world, while a few fanatics remained who were too invested to let this go now. Pundits who not long ago had been critical of the whole thing, who loved to preach the doom of the country, now acted as if they had always known that Britain was fated to birth a third industrial revolution.
Or at least that was the impression of total inhibited success that I got while reading the morning papers at my office in the Castle Academy. However, we were constantly under attack because of our success. Countries, corporations and even religious cults had tried to take down our servers, both through software and more old-fashioned terrorist-with-explosives means. Of course, none of this was allowed to be known to the public. The government didn’t even have to pass new laws for this. The point is, I was only still “alive” and running this place by the skin of my teeth. Unfortunately, by further expanding our reach, I had also expanded the possible vectors of attack. At the current rate, we could add a hundred thousand players per month, and Jerusalem would reach a population of one million active players in approximately two months.
The Castle Academy itself was under an atmosphere of Orwellian levels of total surveillance. On every wall and every ceiling of every room and every corridor, there was a picture of Rina; no matter where you looked, her eyes were on you, except it wasn’t an optical illusion. When Rina made thousands of copies of herself, she could only produce a flat image of herself through which she could simultaneously listen to and unblinkingly watch everyone. Even if it was my idea, I was starting to find it unnerving to see her face whenever I looked anywhere except my newspaper. I caught a glimpse of a story about my dear lawyer Ms Ashley Tanaka making a speech about the dangers of VR by talking on behalf of the family of that one suicide case of a boy who killed himself after racking up some debt of £50k in the game…
I leaned back in my chair and looked up at the ceiling to think, only to see Rina’s unemotional face staring down at me, completely breaking my thought process.
“I am sorry but this is pissing me off. Turn off your copies in this room.” The painting-like two-dimensional images in the room disappeared, and Rina entered the room through the door and closed it, like she had not just been here all this time. I am pretty sure she could have just appeared here at once. I narrowed my eyes on her.
“How can I help you, master?”
“I want to know a second person’s thoughts and since I can’t get that I want to know your thoughts. Tell me, what do you think is the worst threat to the city? Is it the terrorists? The cults? The foreign governments which are sanctioning our economy because it is too productive and not failing like theirs?”
“The worst crisis which is on-going in the game is financial, master.”
I sighed.
The truth is I knew that she was right, but I was trying to escape from that reality. Rina continued to explain like the AI she is without any regard to her “master’s” feeling.
“Even if you could exchange in-game currency for real currency, this is done through a regulated exchange run by the Academy, otherwise this would have led to runaway inflation in the British economy, which would in turn have put into question the existence of this program, which would in turn put your existence into question.. master.”
Basically, you could convert the in-game currency to British pounds but you would have to wait a while so that the effect could at least be staggered, also obviously there was a fixed currency exchange rate meaning that we could arbitrarily change the value of the in-game currency based on guidance/demands from the Bank of England. Unfortunately for me, some players had different ideas and started to engage in illegal Real Money Trading (RMT) by exchanging in-game money for real assets in the real world and also for laundering the money. The biggest group in the game involved was an informal guild named International Gaming Entertainment (IGE), a group based in Hong Kong, led by an individual going by the moniker ‘John Neverdie.’ He was protected by the Party which ruled China, so there wasn’t even a point in trying to lodge an extradition request. Naturally some criminal syndicates with connections to the British Police also were in on it, so it was out of control. My hand reached my forehead.
“Can you think of any ways to stop the illegal RMT?” I calmly asked my AI Maid for guidance. I was also given the power to requisition funds from player’s real life bank accounts for engaging in RMT, but that was a poisoned chalice, and only a theoretical power, because were I to exercise it then that would result in too much bad publicity and might even scare off new players. Maybe once I had an absolute hold on the public, when this place will turn from a luxury to an indispensable necessity, then I will tighten the noose around their necks, just so I can prevent the tightening of the noose around mine… but until then I had to make do with ineffective account bans and fines on the same level as speeding and parking tickets. At least, due to issues in simulations prior to this one, prisoners in British penitentiaries did not have access to Jerusalem.
Rina looked at me curiously for a moment and then answered my question.
“Of course,” Rina raised her finger and then tilted her head sideways like she was thinking too hard. Was there any meaning to her movements? Was she broken? “But not really. Master could ban all in-game trading except from approved channels such as The Great Exchange (the city’s official Auction House) but that would be extremely unpopular and could kill the entire project.”
Rina returned to her normal position with her hands neatly in front of her.
So far the negative effects of RMT had been mitigated by the growth in the economy, and by the fact that the real economy was slowly moving into the game, thus devaluing assets in the real world and so increasing the value of the pound. But how long could this last before growth gains stops and it all blows in my face spectacularly?
It was to discuss this problem and other matters that I arranged a meeting, at the Student Council Room, with the last man I had beheld with my real eyes, before coming to this place where you do not need eyes to see, even if it was through a blue light.
