Battlecloud

It all started the day I got a call from the FBI, Agent Hother was his name. Hother, like mother. I remember the name because of it's strange introduction. 

"Sir, my name is Agent Hother, with an 'O'," he had said. "Like mother."

"Okay," I had replied. So amusingly baffled by the fact that someone would feel the need to point out the correct spelling of their name on a phone call, that I rather forgot he had said he was with the FBI. 

"I'm with an anti-terrorism task force sir," he had continued.

"What?"

"Sir, I'm giving you a courtesy call. I'm afraid you need to pack a suitcase and prepare for some men to come collect you."

"What?" 

"Sir, I know this call is coming as a shock to you, but we have reason to believe you could be in danger and we need you to come in."

"What?" I couldn't help it. My body was reacting to his words before my head could. I could feel the blood draining from my face, weighting my legs until my knees buckled. Then his voice calmed a half-step.

"Sir, I didn't want my men to scare the daylights out of you in a few minutes, so I thought a phone call might help. Get it? I'll see you soon." Then he was gone and I was left alone in my apartment, on my knees in terror until they knocked on the door.

Of course, now that I've gone this far, I'm quite sure I've started too far along in this story. Please allow me to backtrack. Sorry, it's my first time writing all of this down and I'm limited on paper.

Allow me to start when I first got the game.

It was called 'BattleCloud' and was not available in any stores. I had purchased it online through a third-party gaming site for nerds who want to stay ahead of the technology curve. It cost me 10 bucks in bitcoins and took twenty-minutes to download. I used bitcoins to buy these small, indie games because a lot of the time, they were illeagal. Illeagal in so far as the developers had pirated coding from other games in order to fill gaps in their own lines. Think of it as a local T-shirt printer selling his own shirts, but with an NFL logo on them. Illeagal.

The game was amazing. It takes place in a post-apocolyptic world where the human race is living in giant cities hovering in the clouds. Your goal is to work your way up from an ordinary citizen to ruler of any given city. Once in power, you can conquer more cities and, eventually, rule all of Battlecloud. It had taken me five days to rule my first city.

Here's how it works. You have four elements to use in your quest for power. The first is 'Violence'. This is basically where you beat up someone because you want their lunch money. The second is 'Cunning'. This is where you lie, or sweet-talk your way toward your goals. 

The third element is 'Wisdom', one of my favorites. This is where you outhink your opponents, using technology and engineering to either gain favor among your citizens or to conquer others. For example, you can use 'Wisdom' to build a monorail system for your own city or an air force to destroy another. 

The fourth element is 'Love'. A great sentiment but unfortunately, in the game at least, it has only the power to make you happy, not successful. Using 'Love' will help you build the nicest, fairest city only to have in mown down by your neighbors with weapons.

My strategy had been simple. Use 'Wisdom'. Build an economy, build an army and kick a*s. The strategy worked.

Before long, I had twenty fighter pilots, some ground-to-air missles and even a drone that could drop a bomb undetected. 

By the time I had conquered my fourth city, I was beginning to gain respect from other rulers. They offered me partial rule of their own cities, giving me a share of their revenues each year and allowing me to station military assets within their borders, just so I would leave them alone. And the rulers who didn't pay homage, regretted it.

It took me six months to rule 'BattleCloud'. At the end, my character was given a wierd burial and sent to some kind of heaven where scantily-clad, dark-haired women were throwing themselves at him. It was only then I thought something about the game was not quite right. It happened just fas the screen faded to white, keeping it a mystery with the dark-haired girls, but reavealing strange Arabic-looking text on the screen. I thought it was wierd, but I was not alarmed. I just shrugged and thought, whoever these guys are, they made a hell of a video game. 

But then, Agent Hother called. Hother with an 'o' like mother.

When I had been collected, they took me to a hotel. Yes, a hotel. A nice one too. They sat me down, gave me a beer and explained everything.

A small faction of what had been the Taliban had branched off to form what they were calling the Islamic State and these guys had apparently worked for years to code this game, 'BattleCloud' as a way to take down America from within. These tech-savvy extremists had coded the game to control tangible functions in the real world, I had operated the joystick.

Everytime I grew an economy in 'BattleCloud', real American businesses saw a slight dip in their earnings. Every time I robbed a neighbor, some poor American was the victim of identity theft. And worse, every time I pushed the red button in 'BattleCloud', an land-to-air missle would race toward a real American aircraft. Most would miss, but sometimes I would see the news the next day: 'American Bird Shot Down'. I had no idea it was my fault.

Agent Hother disagreed. He, and the agency psychologist they had brought in, kept reassuring me that I could not have known. It was not my fault. The bad guys were the only ones with blood on their hands. Funny how I believed them.

Funny too, now looking back, how righteous I thought those agents were. How my protection seemed to be their biggest concern. How the well being of Americans seemed to be their top priority. Well, it wasn't.

In the end, Hother wanted me to keep piloting the game. That's right. Turns out, the American government had hacked into the code, essentially reversing the real-world outcomes of my in-game movements. I would fly real drones into Syria, drop real bombs in Ahfganistan, destroy real cities in Irag, build a real American economy and a world free from terror just by rebooting the game and playing it all over again. A video game.

Hother said I had a day to decide. That was a joke. Just a way to make it easy if possible, but if it wasn't going to be easy, that was fine with them too. I had two choices:  work for the US Government off the record as a mass murderer or go to prison as the largest domestic terroist in the history of the United States. Hother said they would frame me as the mastermind and designer of 'BattleCloud' if I refused to help. He said they would find another gamer to take my place.

But I couldn't kill real people.

So, here I am, in a maximum security prison on the eastern seaboard. Still waiting on a fair trial, my face known around the country as the very embodiment of evil, writing my story down, hoping someone, somewhere will believe it.