THE PHYSICS ENGINE

by Adam McFarlane

For the heister, the goal was to get the Maraschino cherry red saxophone. It's the mcguffin, it's a Maltese falcon, it's number one on your Lucky Strike Hit Parade.

The name of the game is Gangland . It's heir to Worlds of Warcraft and Second Life . It's America 's war between the World Wars.

The man with the mcguffin calls himself the Boss. He's got a mob of trenchcoats and a couple of molls, avatars he controls with a mouse and a few macros.

The heister was, as he sees it, born behind his time. He's a shouldabeen: a rum rumming, tommygun toting, fedora-fied jazz june. The trick of the heist is getting into the Boss's clubhouse, a Prussian blue fortress shaped like a five-pointed star, a howitzer overlooking the tip of each point. The Boss built it himself, like a child with a virtual Lego set.

So the heister drives up. All the Boss's bots crowd outside the gate, mouse-clicked into position, guns and ammo selected. They watch him in his mint green Pierce-Arrow convertible with silver archer hood ornament and an Omaha orange canvas top. He's a one-man Macy's Christmas parade.

He drives up a certain distance. Then waits.

The Boss waits back. His mob doesn't do anything at first. When the Boss decides to do something finally, he blows the living hell out of that car.

The heister hears the sound of a mortar firing from the castle, then he floors it. The Pierce-Arrow tries to outrun the shell but it goes off in a dazzle-white explosion, a bubble of force lasting only for a flash but sending everything flying. The convertible rockets upward and the Boss's personal Mafia levitate in all directions.

This is all according to the heister's plan.

See, the heister is wearing a flak jacket. Shouldn't stop an exploding car, but it does: it's designed to withstand the impact of any one blow. In Gangland , this is almost always a bullet, and the heister knows this. He's betting on it.

This is how the game works. It follows laws of computing, not laws of nature—a bulletproof vest stopping a bursting ton of steel, for example. The heister, going up as all hep things do when something explodes near them, is flying toward the castle because the car was speeding toward it when the mortar blew up behind him. The hesiter is flying, leaping in a Supermanly single bound, over the castle wall, into the bailey where the priceless sax is kept. With ease, he grabs it.

Sax in inventory, the player saves the game, then resets to start at a spawning point far from the castle.

The heister has game overed.

Glory is his schmoo. There's only one cherry red sax in Gangland , and having it will impress all his MMORPG-otaku buddies. He's got the whole heist recorded, machinima-style, and it's ready for YouTube.

The Boss is cool with it all. He won't Richard Corey himself. Naw, the Boss is glad. Look, even though the red saxophone was a gold sink, the Boss still made money. So the Boss is glad.

Yessirree, I said glad.

‘Cause the Boss's wants greenbacks like Popeye wants his spinach. He knew what the heister's play would be. The Boss auctioned off cars on e-Bay, trading virtual loot to the heister for realtime currency. The heister tested the cars, blowing them up, measuring out trajectories with each one, paying out victory dimes for each DIY ground zero, right into the Boss's personal Paypal.

The Boss understands that other physics engine, the one inside a person's head. He knows the rules, his mind calculates the trajectories of the cars, the path of the heister's next play. He sees the other physics engine at work, the one that mother nature uses in its game with real people. The boss just finds the angle, and works it.