WHEN I COME up into my body I can’t do anything except lie there for a while, wondering if the closest thing I have to a best friend is going to kill me. Or at least convince other people of the need to kill me. Considering all the things the other people I once loved did to me, this would be appropriate. I smirk at the way life always finds a way to remind me that I am fucked.
This was supposed to be a new start. Actual freedom. And I could be in the brig by lunchtime.
I don’t feel guilty about the man’s death. If my suspicion is correct and that guy was involved in the real nuclear war, then great—I was planning to kill him anyway. And if he wasn’t, well, I had no idea he was a player, or that he would die in meatspace. The only thing I feel is the fear of discovery. That and the purest white-hot anger at that fuck who made the game. It isn’t just the manipulation; it’s the way the satisfaction of revenge was stolen from me. I wish I had known what Myerson had done when I killed him. I would have felt so much more satisfaction.
I push that anger aside and check for new messages. There are none. There’s nothing to do, except train for the leet server, and seeing as I might be executed for murder soon, I don’t feel as motivated as before. The fear keeps me pressed into the bed, running through what Carl knows, where he’s going to start digging. Where my vulnerabilities are.
Weirdly, I’d feel better if I’d actually planned that murder, because then I could examine how I’d covered it up and check for holes in the story. It seems that someone has already done that by doctoring the MyPhys data to make it look like I was asleep at the time. What if I was?
I swing my legs off the bed, cutting off that useless train of thought. For now, I’m safe and there is nothing I can do to hide myself any better. I can either sit here and worry or get off my backside and go for a run. I pull on my running shoes, trying not to think about what sort of data mining Carl is doing at this very moment, when a familiar chat dialog box appears to float above my shoelaces.
<So, Dee, how did you feel when you killed him?>
I stand up, fists clenched, my body ready to punch someone who isn’t there. I want to tell him to fuck off, but I need some answers first. <I want to talk to you properly. I’m going to my office, and you’d better be there.> I swipe away the box from my vision and it doesn’t come back.
One shoe on, one shoe off, I lie back down, fists still balls of hurt looking for a target. I rush through the immersion process, “wake” in my office and spin around a couple of times, hoping that his sorry ass will be there.
“Well, come on, then, you bastard!” I yell at the stars. “You know I’m here. Come and talk to me, you fucking coward!”
“Dee, someone has cut this space off from the server,” Ada says in my head. “No traffic in or out.”
“Then how is all this still running?”
“I don’t know,” Ada replies.
A flare of panic bursts through my chest before I realize that if this was Carl or the command crew shutting me down to arrest me, I’d be landing in my body right now, rather than standing on an expanse of slate, worrying about it.
Some of the stars move, a cluster of them, leaving a black patch of starless sky. The stars rush down, coalescing in front of me in a vaguely humanoid shape, like some little god from a folktale. There are no features, the limbs barely discernible. It’s more the cohesive movement of the group that gives the impression of someone there. As disguises go it’s effective and egotistical as hell.
“Do you want to hit me?” ze says in a soft, childlike voice. Ze is shorter than me, and I’m petite. I thought it was a twelve-year-old boy . . . Maybe I was half right. Or maybe this is just a disguise.
“Yes. I do, actually,” I reply. “But I know it won’t do anything. So . . . are you a kid or something?”
“Would it change the way you talk to me?”
I fold my arms, frustrated. “Yeah, it would.”
More stars drop out of the sky to join the cluster, the collective shape shifting into the form of a hulking great beast. “Is this more comfortable for you?” The voice is only slightly deeper.
“You are such a twat.”
It laughs. “If I make myself bigger”—it increases in size until it’s twice my height—“does it make you feel like a small, powerless woman who didn’t know what she was doing when she killed that man?”
“You fuck.” I run at the beast, the stars simply dissipating around my punch. I turn to see it coalescing where I was standing moments before.
“I thought you wanted to talk,” it says. “Put your little fists down and sit with me. You haven’t answered my question and I’ve asked it so many times.”
I relax my hands, berating myself. I never lose my temper. People have done far worse to me and I’ve held it together. I even smiled at some of them when they were hurting me. But at least all those times I knew whom I was dealing with, and the exact parameters of the way they were screwing me over. Losing it here will not do anything except make me look stupid. I make myself glacial, cold as a deep lake.
“That’s better,” it says and points at the slate in front of it. A chair rises out of the ground, much like the doors did, the stone cushions plumping and becoming soft as I watch. “Take a seat. Let’s be civilized. I’ve made sure that no one can listen in. Anything we say here will be kept between us.”
I sit in the chair. “Is that true?” I think to Ada.
“We are cut off,” Ada replies. “And this is not being recorded.”
Not being recorded by me, at least. “So, are you doing this to show off or make a point?”
“Can’t it be both?”
I nod. “Okay. So you’ve proven that you’re leet, fine. I get that. It’s all very impressive and scary, and I’m really hoping that you’re not as young as I think you are, because we are in some serious shit now and I need to talk to you about it without you flicking my tits every five seconds. Okay?”
The beast spreads its hands, settling on its haunches. “Okay. I’m listening.”
“Why . . . why all of that? I thought that game was an initiation, but it wasn’t, was it?”
“Well . . .”
I slap the arm of the chair. It feels like it’s made of leather, cool and smooth to the touch. “Just . . . don’t, okay? Just give it to me straight because I might be dead by the end of today thanks to you fucking me about.”
“You won’t be dead. Carl will never find out that it was you.” It must see the question on my face before I ask it. “I know he’s been asked to look into it. I know you are friends. I made the connection. I haven’t been watching you all morning. Besides, Ada was turned off. How could I spy on you?”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“Ummm . . .”
“Never mind.” The more it talks, the less I’m convinced it’s a child. Which is a relief.
“I changed the MyPhys data to make it look like you were dreaming at the time of death,” it says. “He won’t see how I did it.”
Anyone else, and I’d doubt that alibi. But I’ve seen what it is capable of. “I didn’t know he was going to die. You tricked me.”
“But you wanted to kill him.”
“If that is true—and I am not saying it is, but if it were true—how the fuck would you know what I wanted?”
“You’ve been looking for answers. When I looked at the questions you were asking, I realized that you know the same secret as me. That you wanted to do the same thing as me. So I helped you.”
When it looked at the questions? What does that mean? I haven’t made any relevant search queries, certainly none that could be traced by someone else. Either this is just total bullshit that it believes I would find plausible, or . . . or it’s found a way to hack into my very thoughts. Given the contents of that game it made, that isn’t as far-fetched as I want it to be.
I shake my head. “It didn’t occur to you to sit down with me and have a secret conversation before you tricked me into murdering someone?”
“Generally people don’t respond well when you sit them down and ask them if they would like help to execute people. Especially when they’re a complete stranger.”
Now, there’s an interesting turn of phrase. It has said “kill” and it has said “execute” but not “murder.”
“Besides,” the weird star beast continues, “my method was far better.”
“Bollocks! You . . . you arrogant little shit! That ‘game’ was just a fucking traumafest and there wasn’t any indication that Myerson was involved in what they did in the real world—I’m still not even certain he was—nor that it would kill him in meatspace!”
It tilts its head, as if it is regarding me, as if I’m a creature it hasn’t observed before in the wild. “I’m sorry. I thought you were more clever than you seem to be. I thought it was all perfectly clear. I showed you the impact of what they did. I made sure you paid attention. I told you what he was planning to do—which is exactly the same as what they did in the ‘real’ world, only with nuclear warheads rather than that device in the game. I let you hear his own words on the matter, and then I gave you the choice.”
“The choice to kill an NPC!” I push down the anger again. “Don’t you see the difference? I wasn’t standing there, thinking, right, I’ll kill this real, living man, because he totally deserves it.”
“Are you sure? Wasn’t that exactly what you thought?”
I open my mouth to repeat the fact that I thought I was killing an NPC, but then I suddenly see where the problem in our communication lies. “Oh,” I say quietly. “You’re only thinking about the motivation. Not the fact that I wouldn’t have done it if I thought he was a real person.”
It leans forward. “Wouldn’t you? Who are you trying to persuade? Me, or yourself? Wasn’t that exactly what you’ve been wanting to do for months?”
“Back. Off.” My words come out like a snarl. “I am pretty fucking fed up with you telling me what I have been thinking and wanting to do.”
It sits back. “We could make far better progress if you accept that you would have done exactly the same thing if you had known it would really kill him.”
I don’t want to admit it, but the bastard is right. This is what I wanted. “If I knew for certain that he was involved with those nukes, then . . . all right, I’ll give it to you! What do you want? Gratitude? It doesn’t change the fact you did it in a really shitty way. Nor the fact that there’s an investigation happening right now, and if you’re not as good as you obviously believe you are, then I’m dead.”
“I don’t want gratitude. I want to help you see this through to the end.”
It’s hard talking to a bunch of stars in the shape of a huge beast. “You are fucking unreal,” I mutter. “I don’t even know your name, what you look like, how to contact you . . . and you say you want to help me? You want to use me, more like.”
“But you’re used to that, Dee.”
Another flash of anger that I stamp on before it reaches my face. “You’re not endearing yourself to me, you know.”
“I know. I don’t care about how you feel about me. I care about the fact that you are just as angry as I am about what they did. They don’t deserve to live after that, and they won’t do any good in the future.”
“Look, if you’re so leet, just do it yourself. You could have killed him with an NPC in that game, surely?”
“No, I couldn’t have. And no, I can’t do it myself. I need your help. We can’t kill the next one in the same way. They’ve already taken steps to prevent it from happening again, and they’ll be watching for it.”
“Now, just wait a cocking moment.” I raise a hand to interrupt it. “There is no ‘we’ here! I am not going to help you kill anyone. I don’t know you. I don’t trust you, and JeeMuh, I don’t want to take the risk!”
“I would ask what it would take to make you trust me, but there’s no point, is there, Dee? You don’t trust anyone. It doesn’t matter what I say or do now; you won’t trust me, even though we have the same goal.”
Why does it think it knows me so well? “Listen, I’m not willing to be your weapon, or your secret agent, or whatever else you think I should be. As for what happened to Myerson, I’m not going to just accept what you say. I haven’t seen any proof that he was one of them. I don’t know who the rest are and I’m not stupid enough to accept a list of names from you and act upon it.” I stand up. “If you’re going to tell me that if I don’t help you, you’ll tell Carl what I did, then just fucking get it out of the way now, because I am tired of your bullshit and I have better things to do.”
“That’s right, Dee, push me away before I hurt you. It worked all those times before, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, whatever, go find someone else to fuck over.”
“You’re not going to see this through?”
“Not on your terms.” I fold my arms, chin out, digging in. “I’ll find out what I need to and make up my own mind about what I do next.”
“I will help with that.”
I say nothing, not wanting to encourage it, not wanting to entangle myself any more than I already have.
It stands up too. “I know you won’t believe me, but I didn’t make the game that way just to make you think about what they did. I wanted to show you how far you’ve come. Understanding yourself, and why you are the way you are, is so important.”
I laugh. It’s much better than screaming obscenities at it. Just like when my boss said I needed to stay behind at work so we could talk about how to maximize the exposure from the award win, when I knew all along what he was planning to do. I laugh in its fucking face. “You have cocked this up so badly, there is no coming back from this. Just give up. Seriously. Find someone else.”
“It hasn’t occurred to you that I can’t risk telling you who I am? That I have to protect myself? That I have no reason to trust you either?”
I shrug. “Fair. I’m still not buying into this though. And you’re in my space and you need to get out.” Even as I say it, I know I could be setting my own death in motion. But I am tired of being forced, tired of being used, tired of being the only one in the game without any of the power.
Am I seriously thinking that I’d rather die than live in fear that someone else holds power over me?
Yes. I do believe I am.
The creature reaches inside itself, plucks one of the stars out of its own formation, and rests it on the slate floor between us. “If you change your mind and you want to talk to me again, pick this up and tell me to come here.”
“Nothing is going to change my mind. If you knew me as well as you think you do, you’d know I’m not kidding.”
“If you knew me as well as you wish you did, you wouldn’t say that.”
“Oh, just cock off already!” I shout at it, and the stars blast away from me, dissipating as they fly up, taking their places in the sky once more. All except for one, which remains on the floor where it was left.
The chair melts back into flat rock again and I am left alone, seething.
“Twat,” I mutter.
“Dee,” Ada says. “Connection to the server has been reestablished. Would you like me to run a diagnostic?”
“No,” I say, knowing it was that arsehole who did it and not wanting there to be any sort of evidence trail.
“You have received a message from Carolina Johnson. Would you—”
“Yes, show me!”
The text floats above the slate floor, nice and sharp against the dark background.
Hi Dee,
Awesome job on the report! I loved your insights and I think you could be a real asset to the team. If you want to accept the position, then let my APA know and we’ll get your data privileges upgraded right away. It’s not going to be as varied as your last job, and at first it will mostly be analysis, so you get to know the consumer base on board. Once you’ve found your feet, I have a project that I know you’ll love. Let me know!
CJ
“Yes!” There’s a link to a job summary, which looks like something I could do most of in my sleep. She’s right that it’s less varied, but I don’t care when I see the access privileges. I’ll be able to look at everyone’s consumption data, regardless of their pay grade, and if I can justify the reason, I can request it be de-anonymized.
I scan the benefits, note a salary—what the hell am I going to spend that on?—and the fact that I will have an actual pay grade again. I haven’t seen any sort of virtual marketplace on board, all the food and accommodation is free . . . is this just some sort of weird status thing?
Remuneration in the form of monetary credit is of no interest to me anyway; it’s the data access privileges that I want. I get Ada to scan the legal jargon for me and check that it doesn’t contain anything potentially problematic. The only thing she flashes up is how hard-core the NDA is—I can’t mention anything about my salary, pay grade or the information I interact with as part of my job to anyone other than Carolina and anyone else she chooses to personally approve. That’s no surprise. It’s on a par with the one for my old job, and perfectly understandable, given the information I’ll have access to.
I send an acceptance message right away. In moments there’s a standard “Welcome to the team!” message from Carolina’s APA and then Ada says, “Your privileges have been updated.”
I rub my hands together, grinning. Finally, I have a way to find the information I need.
But the old worry about data trails is still there, and even more legitimate now that I’ve murdered someone.
Even though the fear of discovery is all too real, it’s not enough to drown out the need to know whether that man deserved to die. I think back to what Carl showed me in that room of his. I know the man’s name, that he was an engineer and that he was high up. But I daren’t search for his data, not the same morning they’re investigating his death.
I’m being so stupid. I’ve been butting my head against this for so long, I’ve got into the habit of treating this like an Internet search. It isn’t like that now I have this level of clearance; I can call up any of the data I want and examine it in my own space. The only thing that will be logged on the server is the request from my APA to pull that information. If I pull a few hundred people’s worth of data, they will have no idea what I was paying attention to here. Besides, Carolina wants me to get to know the consumer base, right?
“Ada, how many people in total are in the command crew and the next three highest pay grades on this ship?”
“Do you wish me to include those passengers who have diamond-class tickets?”
“The what now?”
“Diamond-class tickets were awarded to a selected group of people pre-Rapture.”
“Why didn’t you tell— Oh right, I never asked. Yeah, include them too.”
“Three hundred and forty-five people above the age of eighteen are included in that sample.”
That’s good enough for me. “Okay, for that sample, pull all of the data I have legit access to now and display it mannequin style, randomized order.”
I now have more data than I thought would ever be available to me, dumped into my server space in one batch. If Carl or anyone else chooses to see what data I’ve pulled today, they’ll see it as a collective whole, and one I can justify as getting to know the most important mersive consumers on this ship. All I need to do now is hunt down what I need in the privacy of my own office.
In the time it takes for me to blink, avatars of 345 adults appear in the space around me, making my bleak office feel like a weird clothing vendor app. Instead of the mannequins in the shop’s range, they look like all of the most powerful people on this ship. They are all standing perfectly still, looking into the middle distance, most of them dressed in a very simple white uniform that reminds me of the clothes worn by US Navy personnel back at the turn of the century.
The first time I used this display mode it freaked me out. Now I find it helps. I can walk up to each data point and see them as a person, right from the start, for one thing. I can get a sense of some demographics at first glance and I can see what they choose to have displayed in their public profile. Some choose to show themselves in ball gowns, some in sportswear, some in gaming costumes. Interesting that all of the command crew are in uniforms. That smacks of a global setting imposed upon them, probably to help the other passengers on the ship get used to identifying them by their role first.
Their real names are displayed in text floating above their heads. The ones who are not command crew have additional icons floating next to them, reflecting the additional personal information that they have personally selected as critical, top-level display information. One man has chosen to make it very clear that he is a follower of Jesus and also a proud member of the Top One Hundred Club, famously established to cater to the wealthiest one hundred individuals on the planet. I raise an eyebrow at that.
“Ada, show me where Commander Brace and Lieutenant Commander Joseph Myerson are,” I say. Of course, she could just move them to where I am, but I don’t have it set up that way. I like to go to them, like I am visiting a person, taking in the way their peers, or others in their particular demographic, look en route. A large blue arrow appears over the heads of two figures a little way away.
I walk between mannequins toward the ones I’m interested in. Every five I pass, I rest my hand on the shoulder of the sixth, just a light tap, short-listing them for further study. I’m just covering my bases, just in case someone looks at whose data I dig deeper into.
I pause in front of Commander Brace’s avatar. I still don’t know if he was involved with the war on Earth, but he’s so high up in the command chain, there’s a chance he was, and I want to learn more about him. Up close he looks just as square-jawed and handsome as he did in the tiny profile pic I saw via Carolina’s profile. “Ada, is Carolina Johnson part of this data set?”
“No. Carolina Johnson is currently two pay grades below your lowest criteria. Would you like me to include her?”
“No.”
I move on, over to where Myerson is standing. Strange to think that he is dead now. The only indication of that is that his name has been grayed out, like he’s a character I can no longer play in a game.
He looks normal enough, but then, most fundamentalists do, especially in their own profile pictures. I can still tap on his name if I want to, and view his interests and anything else he made public. Just as I’m reaching up to do that, I see something on his lapel that makes me freeze: a tiny pin showing the Earth with only the North American continent on it, just like the pin in the game that killed him.