The man had to be smarter than he appeared, but the way he kept stressing “his seed” unironically made me wonder just how naive he was. I imagined him typing “dark web dot com” in his browser, like he expected to get to some kind of alternative eBay with verified sellers who followed the rules, took credit cards, and posted thoughtful reviews. “Zero out of five stars. This buyer would not take no for an answer.”
I closed my eyes long enough to pray for patience and a straight face. “And then what happened?”
“I got hoodwinked. Literally. Buncha guys came at me outside of Dairy Queen one night and put a hood on me. Next thing you know, boom. I’m in this place. I think maybe they gave me something because I don’t remember much in between.”
“Because they want backdoor access to the system?”
Buck’s eyes got shifty again. I followed them and noticed most people weren’t paying much attention to us. Two guards were watching us, but I was pretty sure they didn’t speak English. I continued to act like I was helping him stay calm through his injury.
“Kinda. They, uh… they want my seed.”
For the love of God, if this man didn’t stop saying things like that, I was going to turn into a thirteen-year-old boy. “Explain. What does Gustavo Santiago want with your video game?”
“So, like, I wrote some code into the game so I could have a way of getting into it from anywhere. Little tricks within the game that open portals to the back end. It wasn’t exactly authorized, but it was dead useful for testing later levels of the game directly from my Horn, and…” He hesitated. “When the money guys came along, I got scared, you know? Like, I always heard about them business types wanting to take from the little guy. I’m not a little guy, but I’m a little guy if you catch my drift. I had to protect my game.” He seemed defensive, like he knew how many laws he’d broken when he’d tried to retain control of a game that wasn’t legally his.
“Go on.”
He sighed and winced, reaching down as if to touch the leg wound. I batted his hand away from the bandage. “Crap, okay. Gawd this hurts like a mofo. Anyways, there’s a little seed icon I’ve hidden deep in the game so it’d be damned near impossible to find unless you knew where it was at. It only appears when you complete Level 13 by declaring a truce with the Dragon King of Thumlor and doing the Epic Dance of Peace—which no one does, because that dragon is such a jerk, he’d make even my Grandma Loving curse a blue streak, and Essie Loving-Nutter was never one to take the Lord’s name in vain, rest her soul. You with me?”
“Not entirely,” I admitted.
“Point is, there’s a hidden seed, and the seed is the access point. Got me?”
“Got you.”
“But here’s the thing. If you can get into the game, you can get into the, uh… the money stuff. Like, if you’re playing in online mode, you tie your game account to your bank account so you can buy and sell silver pips.” He glanced around to make sure no one had gotten closer. “Which I guess is a really convenient way to launder money… or it would be, if the game were set up so that those transactions bypassed the HOG Corporate server and weren’t recorded. So that’s what they want me to do. They want me to hide their drug shit in the game.”
“Drug shit. Just the transactions? Or their deals and sales? Contact information? What?”
He nodded and winced again. “All that. I have all the bank account information for Santiago’s associates. Turnip blight is scheduled for tonight—they happen from time to time so HOG Corporate can upload bug fixes and whatnot—and that’s when they want me to make the changes. Once it goes into the system… they’ll be able to do all their business through the game. The transactions will be hidden, and anyone with a Horn will be able to make drug deals with the cartel. It’s all tied to usernames instead of real names. If the feds come sniffing around, destroy the Horn. Once they’re gone, buy another one and log in with your username again. Easy peasy.”
“But the Horn purchase itself would lead back to you.”
“Naw, man. Buy it in an airport with cash. Grab it at Walmart. Get your little cousin to pick one up for you. They’re not tracked that closely.”
I thought it through. “And they’re available all over the world.”
Buck nodded. “And when you’re playing one, no one thinks anything of it.”
“But couldn’t the chats be monitored by corporate HOG? The feds could subpoena that information from HOG’s servers.”
“And they’d find a bunch of anonymous chats between randos. And the chats are about eggplant trades or carrot prices.” He lifted an eyebrow at me. “Got me?”