out.
‘Oh, you mean like Call of Warfare and Battlefield Duty and what have you,’ he said, which mis-namings Ross took as a no.
‘Are you saying I’d have been better prepared? Fair comment, I suppose, though I’m learning fast through the real thing. No,
the only thing I’ve played is golf on the Wii. Bought the console for the girls. Oh, God, the girls.’
He looked like he was about to cry, which on a face like his would be a sight to see.
‘I miss them so much, and Gemma, their mum. They must be as scared about whatever’s happened to me as I am about them. Laura
is a born worrier at the best of times – such a considerate little girl – and the younger one, Wendy, just clamps on to me
like a limpet when I come home at night.’
Now there really were tears. How the hell could there be tears? By the same token, how the hell could NPCs have names, personalities,
values and even politics?
It didn’t matter right now. What was more pertinent was that Ross clearly couldn’t tell Bob what he had deduced. The guy had
no frame of reference to understand it, and was holding on by his fingernails as it was. Bob had come to terms as best hecould with the idea of being on some other planet, so telling him that he was actually inside a video game would either tip
him over the edge or make him think Ross was the one plunging like Wile E. Coyote, head-down into insanity canyon.
‘We’ll get home,’ Ross said, hoping he sounded more convincing to Bob than he did to himself. ‘As you said, if there was a
way for us to get here, there has to be a way back.’
Bob’s eyes widened with a manic resolve.
‘The space marines,’ he said excitedly. ‘They’re Americans. If they got here, they can get us home. Unless it’s a one-way
mission,’ he added, with equally manic despair. ‘I saw a TV documentary once that said it would take centuries, even in a
super-advanced spaceship, to reach the nearest star system hosting a potentially life-supporting planet. Oh, God, does that
mean my family could have died hundreds of years ago?’
‘Don’t think that way,’ Ross chivvied, racking his brains for some plausibly sciencey-sounding bullshit to shore up Bob’s
optimism. ‘I heard one of the aliens talking about sub-space technology. They could be using a means of travel that transcends
dimensional space, able to jump light years in a second.’
‘But what about the marines’ own technology? That’s got to be from far into Earth’s future.’
‘Listen, we don’t know anything about this place, so there’s no point making any assumptions.’
‘You’re right,’ Bob said, nodding frantically. ‘You’re right. I’ve got to keep it together. I owe it to Gemma, Laura and Wendy.
I must never lose hope. I’ve got to be strong. They’re what’s going to get me through this. I’ll be strong
for
them and I’ll draw strength
from
them.’
Bob seemed to fill with determination right before Ross’s eyes. It was an inspiring sight: witnessing someone galvanise himself
with love, steeling himself to withstand anything through his feelings for his wife and daughters. So it was with a thoroughly
crass sense of timing that a grenade happened to bounce its way to Bob’s feet at that very moment and blew him to bits.
Bob absorbed most of the blast, with Ross only sustaining a minor whack to one of his armoured chest-plates and a temporary
blinding by dust, smoke and a spray of wet matter. This last was both resultant of the chest blow and the explanationfor why it was minor: one of Bob’s hands had been blown off and impacted at high speed, splattering in a radius of clammy
yuck that took in most of Ross’s face.
Ross recovered from the shock in time to see a space marine charge forward, following up his grenade, a machine-gun in his
hands. He wondered why the marine hadn’t fired while he was reeling from the blast, then remembered that the marine NPCs’
combat-AI
‘Oh, you mean like Call of Warfare and Battlefield Duty and what have you,’ he said, which mis-namings Ross took as a no.
‘Are you saying I’d have been better prepared? Fair comment, I suppose, though I’m learning fast through the real thing. No,
the only thing I’ve played is golf on the Wii. Bought the console for the girls. Oh, God, the girls.’
He looked like he was about to cry, which on a face like his would be a sight to see.
‘I miss them so much, and Gemma, their mum. They must be as scared about whatever’s happened to me as I am about them. Laura
is a born worrier at the best of times – such a considerate little girl – and the younger one, Wendy, just clamps on to me
like a limpet when I come home at night.’
Now there really were tears. How the hell could there be tears? By the same token, how the hell could NPCs have names, personalities,
values and even politics?
It didn’t matter right now. What was more pertinent was that Ross clearly couldn’t tell Bob what he had deduced. The guy had
no frame of reference to understand it, and was holding on by his fingernails as it was. Bob had come to terms as best hecould with the idea of being on some other planet, so telling him that he was actually inside a video game would either tip
him over the edge or make him think Ross was the one plunging like Wile E. Coyote, head-down into insanity canyon.
‘We’ll get home,’ Ross said, hoping he sounded more convincing to Bob than he did to himself. ‘As you said, if there was a
way for us to get here, there has to be a way back.’
Bob’s eyes widened with a manic resolve.
‘The space marines,’ he said excitedly. ‘They’re Americans. If they got here, they can get us home. Unless it’s a one-way
mission,’ he added, with equally manic despair. ‘I saw a TV documentary once that said it would take centuries, even in a
super-advanced spaceship, to reach the nearest star system hosting a potentially life-supporting planet. Oh, God, does that
mean my family could have died hundreds of years ago?’
‘Don’t think that way,’ Ross chivvied, racking his brains for some plausibly sciencey-sounding bullshit to shore up Bob’s
optimism. ‘I heard one of the aliens talking about sub-space technology. They could be using a means of travel that transcends
dimensional space, able to jump light years in a second.’
‘But what about the marines’ own technology? That’s got to be from far into Earth’s future.’
‘Listen, we don’t know anything about this place, so there’s no point making any assumptions.’
‘You’re right,’ Bob said, nodding frantically. ‘You’re right. I’ve got to keep it together. I owe it to Gemma, Laura and Wendy.
I must never lose hope. I’ve got to be strong. They’re what’s going to get me through this. I’ll be strong
for
them and I’ll draw strength
from
them.’
Bob seemed to fill with determination right before Ross’s eyes. It was an inspiring sight: witnessing someone galvanise himself
with love, steeling himself to withstand anything through his feelings for his wife and daughters. So it was with a thoroughly
crass sense of timing that a grenade happened to bounce its way to Bob’s feet at that very moment and blew him to bits.
Bob absorbed most of the blast, with Ross only sustaining a minor whack to one of his armoured chest-plates and a temporary
blinding by dust, smoke and a spray of wet matter. This last was both resultant of the chest blow and the explanationfor why it was minor: one of Bob’s hands had been blown off and impacted at high speed, splattering in a radius of clammy
yuck that took in most of Ross’s face.
Ross recovered from the shock in time to see a space marine charge forward, following up his grenade, a machine-gun in his
hands. He wondered why the marine hadn’t fired while he was reeling from the blast, then remembered that the marine NPCs’
combat-AI
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