In late 2021, Customs and Border Patrol pulled over a jeep with 60kg of meth in the fuel tank.
The driver? An American girl from Arizona.
According to her, she met someone while playing Grand Theft Auto 5 earlier that year. They got to know each other in the game, then transferred their conversations to Snapchat.
Then, they met in person in Phoenix. Her new acquaintance offered her the chance for easy cash for taking electronics over the border.
She took a bus from Arizona to Mexico, picked up a jeep, and received instructions about filling up gas at particular stations. Then, after crossing the border back into Mexico, the drugs were discovered.
Turning this into a story, what if two childhood best friends are groomed and recruited for opposing organizations?
In a dystopian future, the drug trade has gotten out of control. The military has stepped in and uses remote android strikes against suspected cartels.
One friend plays Grand Theft Auto, and they are recruited into a real-life drug-running campaign.
The other friend plays Call of Duty, and they get recruited into controlling the remote androids from afar.
Like Ender’s Game, the person controlling the androids has no idea that his “game” is happening in real-time.
The friends each get an all-expenses-paid trip, one to Mexico and the other to Quantico.
The friend in Quantico gets a call while playing his game. It’s his friend, driving back to America from Mexico. They talk on Facetime while the drug-runner is getting gas, and the player controlling the drone realizes he’s looking at the same gas station on both screens.
He tells his friend to hide, then blows up the truck.
The friends meet back home and use each other’s insider knowledge to rise in the ranks.
We see them play the espionage game in real life throughout the story, staying hidden from their superiors while still receiving accolades. For example, the friend in the cartel tells the android operator where drug runners will be, and the android operator tells the drug-runner which areas are targets for an attack.
Shit hits the fan when the cartel starts questioning how the drug-runner knows so much about future android strikes that don’t ever affect him. They get suspicious and set the drug-runner up for a suicide mission.
The two friends realize they need to get the drug-runner out of Mexico. But the only people who can protect him are the government agency where the android-controlling friend works. Bringing him in will expose the double-agent in the agency.
In the end, the friends come up with a plan for faking each other’s death, pretending the opposing organization found out about their connection via the friendship. The story ends with the two friends on a freight ship headed for the Philippines, their video game consoles alongside them.
