And I meant it, too.
Chapter 28
Istood, and I casually walked over to the Cheetah unit with the blabbering idiot. The black scout bot hovered nearby as the honeybees continued to take it apart.
This unit had been the base silver, but it was covered with green-and-yellow squiggly, graffiti-like paint. All that remained was the giant circular egg, face down. The honeybees would repurpose any remaining ammo and scrap the rest.
I was hoping we’d be able to build one of these for ourselves, but Roger insisted the effort wouldn’t be worth it. There were much more effective things we could build with the usable spare parts, especially the large guns on the Heavies.
The mech continued to spout nonsense that I could barely understand. He wasn’t talking to us. At least I didn’t think he was.
“I’ve just discovered something interesting,” the scout said with Roger’s voice as the mech babbled on and on. “Apex is artificially decreasing the effective range of their missiles. The design on their missiles should allow them a range of twenty or so kilometers, but they are mostly relegated to line of sight. It is the same with their mortar and artillery units. We do not have the same limitations, and we will adjust for the next encounter.”
“It’s not fun if you can’t see what you’re fighting,” I said. I continued to just listen to the face-down mech babble.
“That’s right, Droogies!” the man was saying. “It says I’m still online, so I’m staying until lights out. The light still says I’m in the enemy base. Yes, thank you for your donation. Grapefruit! Five squeezes for you! Drip! Drip! Drip! Cheesy shasta! Yeah! Death to all terrorists. Your boy went down fighting! DONATION! Yeah, twinkles! Twinkles! I’m pumping. Don’t know if it’s working, but I’m doing it. Drooooogies!”
What the hell? He was talking complete nonsense.
“Can he hear me?” I asked.
“No,” Roger said. “We have disconnected the audio and video receptors. We have deliberately kept the main communication relay online on this and several of the other mechs as we study their input and output bandwidth. I believe we can now accurately ascertain if a mech is being directly piloted by the customers or if they’re under AI control.”
“Wait. AI control?” I asked. “Some mechs are not being controlled by people?”
“Yes. If the player needs to take a break, they can give the mech orders, and it will attempt to complete them, not unlike our regular drone units. If they don’t return to the mech in a certain amount of time, the mech will return to or call a deployment unit on its own. It appears that some players are preferring to move to AI control during some battles, as the AI controls aren’t subject to the latency.”
“Like your type of AI?”
Roger made a beep, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought it was a sort of laugh. “No. Not even close. If they did, we’d all likely be dead by now.”
“Still, if they’re going to have some sort of AI control them, why bother?” I asked.
Roger didn’t answer. Below, the mech continued to babble.
“Thanks for the donation! Wag that dog! Wag it!”
“Roger, what is he talking about?”
“I am watching his live stream right now on LoftBase. That is the same platform most of the others stream upon. He has changed the name of his stream toLive from the Rhythm Mafia Headquartersand he’s the only streamer from tonight’s raid still streaming from the battlefield. His stream has hit the Hot Feeds list on the front page, and he is gathering thousands of followers by the minute. Tens of thousands.”
I looked up this particular streamer on Roger’s chart.
This guy was a lone streamer who went by the name Droog. He was twenty-three years old, and he lived in a place called New Rio. His real name was Benicio Campos. He didn’t normally stream himself playing games, though he did sometimes. He was known for trading insults with other streamers—that and making fun of and pranking regular people, especially those who were in line waiting to interview for supplemental monetary assistance. Everyone on Earth received Universal Basic Income, but certain things supposedly caused one to lose access to UBI or receive reduced benefits, and certain other circumstances allowed people to receive more. I didn’t really understand how any of that stuff worked, but I did gather that the city of New Rio was a particularly poor area, but Benicio Campos himself received money from a trust.
The notes stated he had five million followers, which apparently was on the lower end of popular.
Five million. That was more than the entire population of New Sonora.
And just as I thought that, Droog shouted, “Six million! Six million! Fook yeah, can I get a La Piña spin?”
He’d gained one million followers just because he was still streaming.
“He can’t see anything?” I asked.
“No,” Roger said.
“Can you fix his microphone so I can talk to him? Just audio, not visual.”
