Chương 18: Better Than Everyone Else’s Map

Cecilia had set up a workroom for the new analyst group underneath Palazzo Valperga. The retrofitted wine cellars were now a combination server farm, break room, and meeting space. There were still racks where bottles used to sit, but now they held routers and quiet, humming equipment, all wired into a closed network. It was hot and close, with two standing lights casting long shadows. A dry-erase board on one wall was covered in notes in two different handwriting styles, one careful, one erratic.

She found Luca at his desk with a monitor showing a view of the public forums, scrolling rapidly while he chewed on a stylus. His hoodie was unzipped over a faded band shirt. She recognized the band because Bianca liked them.

"I need numbers," Cecilia said, sitting in the only unoccupied chair. Luca looked up, startled but not panicked. He swallowed and nodded quickly. The others were already coming over. Iris appeared from a storage closet with a stack of hard-copy papers, Ermilio from the break table with coffee in a cup with a broken handle, Ivan from the floor where he had apparently been asleep until now. Giulia stayed near her keyboard, turning to face the center of the room. Cecilia had met each of them briefly.

They didn't look comfortable, but they didn't look rebellious, and right now, that was the threshold.

"You have your first task as the System Analysis Division," she said.

"I want you to give me a demographic breakdown of Players and NPCs in Turin. Everything we can measure or estimate. How many people accepted a class. How many didn't. Age groups, profession categories, density by district." Ivan, the one who had been asleep, frowned.

"The System doesn't publish that data."

"I know."

"It's not like you can... run a survey."

"Correct." There was a pause, and then Ermilio said, "You want us to infer it." She nodded.

"You understand we're working with less data than an amateur opinion poll," Iris said, not rudely, like someone trying to check the question to see if it made sense to everyone involved.

"I understand your assumptions will be broad and your error margins will be high. Give me the best you can." She looked at each of them in turn.

"This is not a request to make something up. This is a request to treat it as you would a research problem. Use everything available." She could see the professional side of them wake up behind the post-apocalyptic shell. Luca pulled a keyboard toward him, opened a blank document. The others began to adjust themselves, shifting into the mental gear she needed.

"I need a first estimate within forty-eight hours. If you can isolate the biggest variables by then, I'll know we can work with you." Ermilio scratched the back of his head.

"You realize no one has any solid data? Every number we get will be... a guess with a spreadsheet."

"Then make a very educated guess. People our age who play games probably accepted classes more often. Geriatrics almost certainly did not. White-collar workers are more likely to dismiss the prompt as an attack. Service workers who know the street is more dangerous may have taken it seriously. Ignore the children population." She stood up, pulling the chair back for the next person.

"Tell me what the spread looks like. The map we get isn't about perfect accuracy. It's about being better than everyone else's map." Giulia spoke up for the first time, voice quiet.

"That's a low bar."

"It's the one that wins." She nodded to Luca, who was typing now, setting up something with column headers.

"I'll check back in tomorrow morning." She paused at the stairs.

"You're all being monitored, but I don't expect any of you to do anything that would concern me." No one promised anything. That was fine. The next morning, she returned to the room to find them arguing over a projected graph with multiple scenarios overlaid in different colors.

"This one's garbage," Ivan was saying, pointing at the yellow line.

"You can't treat the metro area like the city."

"But the population density is proportional—" Iris started.

"It's not. The city center collapsed differently." Cecilia stayed by the doorway and let them work. Eventually, Luca turned in his chair, looking tired but sharper than he had been the day before. She was going to keep him on caffeine and crisis for the next two weeks and see if his output improved.

"We've got a preliminary," Luca said, gesturing to the whiteboard, which was now filled with notes and percentage ranges.

"City of Turin proper, estimate around one hundred and forty-five thousand Players, leaving just under six hundred seventy thousand as NPCs. The metropolitan area will have a similar ratio, just higher numbers." She walked over to read the key variables they'd listed. Assumptions used: Age filters, profession bias toward early adopters, correlation with gamer culture as a predictor. A seventy percent overlap between players of online roleplaying games and those who accepted a class.

Public servants as low-acceptance group due to institutional instructions to ignore the prompt. Metro area adjusted for lower connectivity outside the urban core. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"We don't have enough data to weight all this properly," Ermilio said, leaning on the edge of the table.

"So it's more of a framework than a fact."

"It's still the first structured model in the city," Cecilia said, reading the details again, then the projection they'd drawn with colored markers, a segmented pie chart showing how many were probably Players in each district.

"You've assumed the highest Player percentage in the student areas. Lower in the governmental district?"

"Yes," Luca said.

"The university population matches global patterns of acceptance, but we can't separate the students from the faculty. The numbers are approximate." Iris pointed to the graph.

"But the student housing areas will also be where a lot of unregistered kids live with their families, so it's not one-to-one." Cecilia looked at the metro section.

"You think the industrial outskirts have lower Player adoption?"

"Blue-collar workers were less exposed to gaming," Giulia said, still behind her keyboard.

"And they were more likely to have been told by unions or local officials to hold off. The percentage in Mirafiori could be as low as ten percent." That mattered, because Mirafiori was the Fiat heartland. If there were fewer Players per capita there, that was an opportunity she could exploit. It meant her Family could reach the industrial base without running into another organized force.

"Good." She stepped back from the board and glanced at Luca.

"Put this in a one-page brief. Show the assumptions and the ranges. Give me the bottom line, and highlight the gaps where we need more intel." He nodded, already moving his notes around to begin the summary. Ermilio cleared his throat.

"How do you want us to use this?"

"It'll tell us the demographic of the opposition. If the majority of Turin's combat power is young, they'll be uncoordinated, unpredictable, but individually powerful. You don't have to think too hard to imagine what a hundred and forty thousand people around our age who now have powers could do when bullets from NPC law enforcement can barely hurt them." Giulia winced.

"Probably something unwise."

"Anarchy. Exploitation of the weak. Micro-kingdoms ruled by whoever has the highest stats." Cecilia folded her arms, looking at the projections.

"If the military and police are mostly NPCs now, and they are, then they're outmatched person-to-person. They won't be able to restore order unless we help them, or replace them."

"Which is what we're doing," Ivan said, like he was catching up.

"In part." She gave them each a look, holding it for a breath.

"But the other part is deciding who the future belongs to. I'd prefer to own it. These numbers tell me where to invest to achieve that. This"—she tapped the board—"is the kind of work you do from now on. You translate chaos into leverage. You analyze the System's effects before they happen. You give me a path. When someone else comes along trying to figure things out, I want us to already be done figuring." She could see the idea sink in, each of them reacting differently. Luca straightened up.

Iris bit her lip, then nodded once. Ivan frowned, and Ermilio folded his arms like it was making him uncomfortable. Giulia just kept typing, but she was watching Cecilia from the corner of her eye.

"Don't be naive enough to think that makes us the heroes," Cecilia said, her voice hardening a little.

"You're on my team, not a morality play. But if you live in this city, if you love this city, this is how you save it from whoever won't save it properly. Am I understood?" A round of nods followed. They didn't have enthusiasm. That was fine. They were still standing. Cecilia and Matteo sat in her office with the printout of Luca's model on the desk, a pot of coffee between them. It was the first solid piece of analysis they'd received, and she wasn't surprised Matteo was as focused on it as she was.

"You realize what this means?" Matteo said, tapping the edge of the page where they'd written the age distribution of Players.

"We have a youth bulge of powered individuals. That's the demographic that doesn't defer to traditional authority. It's a revolutionary core waiting for a cause."

"Or a mob," she agreed.

"That's why I'm having Dario recruit from that population before anyone else does."

"But even if we get the best of them, we still have to control the rest." Matteo pushed the coffee toward her, then sat back.

"Which means our approach to institutions has to change. The police are already seeing it, even if they haven't put the numbers to it yet. They can't handle the shift alone. And the military..."

"We know what the military's limitation is," she said, sipping the coffee. It was too hot and a little bitter, just the way she liked it.

"Most of their rank-and-file aren't Players, and they can't fight the Player population effectively. They'll be busy trying to fight off the monsters while dying and wasting resources. If we position ourselves correctly, we become the bridge between the civilians who are vulnerable and the Player population who could either protect them or destroy them. We provide the governance they both need."

"That's how we move from protection economy to de facto administrative control." He was nodding to himself, thinking it through, making connections she already had but letting him arrive so the conclusion felt earned.

"But we'll have to formalize our relationship with the I's office soon. Whether they survive or not, we need some veneer of legitimacy for people who still care what the city government looks like."

"Not the mayor," Cecilia said, leaning back in her chair.

"The city council. It's larger, messier, less likely to be dead or a lone figurehead. We make sure our people have influence on enough seats to steer their public statements, while still keeping the appearance of a cooperative civil power structure."

"You think they'll accept that?"

"It doesn't matter. What matters is whether the public accepts it. And the public wants someone telling them who's in charge. They don't care if it's a lie as long as it feels like the city is still standing." She set her cup down, feeling the calm certainty settling into place, like everything in her was moving to a natural conclusion.

"The other side of this problem," Matteo said quietly, "is what happens when the Player population realizes they're the new elite in Turin. They won't listen to the old rules unless there's someone standing in the way who can enforce consequences. You want to be that person."

"We'll be those people," she corrected.

"Not just me. All of us." He gave her that measured look that was as close to affection as he ever showed outside of contract clauses and late-night work sessions.

"The System seems to favor the bold. And you're very, very bold." She thought about the fifty-seven who'd chosen in time, and the hundreds who hadn't—because she'd been too careful to give an order she couldn't justify. She didn't intend to be careful in that particular way again. That was what the Division was for.

"You should be proud to serve an optimist in your old age, Matteo. It's inspiring." She grinned, and he didn't quite smile, but he looked away long enough for the humor to pass.

"You'll need me to reach out to any officials before you announce this?" he asked, moving on, business-like, but in a way that let her know she'd touched on something he needed to hear. A reminder of where the balance was.

"Yes," she said.

"I need quiet meetings. Keep it civil, keep it informal. We want the right of first negotiation when it's time to make the 'public-private partnership' official. Let them think this is still just businesses offering assistance, not a redefinition of civic control."

"I'll start with the deputy mayor. He's most likely to want a safe exit." Matteo gathered up his papers.

"I'll be back in the morning with the terms we can float to him."

"You always think two moves ahead. That's why I never let you get away." He hesitated with his hand on the doorknob. Then he gave that tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth she knew meant amusement, and left her alone with her plans.