Something Wicked Anthology, Vol. One Read online

  “Whoops!” said the puppet.

  “Oh, crap,” said McHaffey.

  Quickly, McHaffey squirted another drop into his left eye and checked the transponder pendant around his neck, which bleeped a warning as he was rummaging in his pockets for the manual. He squatted by Tail, patting the dog’s head.

  “Sorry, I hope you don’t…”

  A wave of vertigo interrupted the thought and dropped McHaffey onto the kitchen floor, sending the puppet tumbling. Tail whined, pawing at McHaffey’s leg, but the flesh was going as numb as a dead piece of meat. His inner ear told him he’d tipped over onto the rug, but he couldn’t feel it. The ceiling was patchy, grey, swirling into black.

  Harmless? Was that what she’d said?

  McHaffey found himself, with Tail, sitting before Zhen Cameron’s polished desk on the other side of Vancouver. She smiled, with a face spared the creases her erstwhile commander had acquired over the years. No surprise there - wealth and cosmetic therapies could stop time, and his old comrade-in-arms had risen in the world in more ways than just to this corner office with a view: from Section Comms Assistant, as she’d been when they met, up to partner in Transparadisium Incorporated. In her smart grey suit and still militarily cropped black hair, framed by a panorama of the city, Cameron regarded him with old respect, compounded with a little awareness of the reversal in hierarchy that had happened over the years.

  “Perfectly harmless, not like the things we saw in the war,” she assured him. “Players just place a drop in the eye, and the nans migrate along the sclera to the optic nerve and the brain, where they isolate sensory areas and immerse the user in simulated sensa. The necklace transponder relays data between nans and network. We’re transitioning from alpha- to beta-testing, with a few thousand users, but the launch will be happening shortly.”

  McHaffey fought away light-headedness, and a curious feeling of familiarity, as he leant out of his chair to set the player-kit back down on Cameron’s desk. “I imagine you didn’t hunt me down just to sell a game subscription, Zhen. How did you find me, by the way?”

  “We don’t call it a game. It’s a…”

  “…a multi-user environment,” McHaffey interrupted, wondering immediately how he’d known that.

  Cameron nodded. “Yes. I’d hoped to run into you at the regimental reunion last weekend, but since you didn’t show, I found you through Servus, the employee database. You’ve had an… interesting career trajectory since leaving the Forces last decade.” Cameron’s eyes flicked to a screen for a moment. “I see you do a night shift as a police constable, and you’re a priest during the day.”

  McHaffey cleared his throat. “Strictly speaking, I’m a priest around the clock.”

  Around the clock. Had he said that already? He hated to sound nervous by repeating himself, but…

  “Have you really,” she continued, squinting incredulously at the screen, “started a crusading army?”

  Have I? He rubbed the bridge of his nose, and remembered. “It’s more of a charity than an army,” he explained. Ever since founding the Order of St. Wulfstan, he’d had certain misgivings about the project. Some rather odd types joined. Still, it did some good work. “Being part of an order, with rules, seems to help focus people on a goal, and make the sacrifices necessary to help others. Overcomes the ego, maybe.”

  “Not exactly the employment I would have foreseen for the man they used to call the Black Baron of Mongolia. At least you’re using your old leadership skills, eh? Good for you, Ben. The truth is,” she said, growing quieter and more confidential, “the chief programmer for TEN – our flagship, the Transparadisium Environment Network – has dropped off the map. I understand that you sometimes resolve problems… outside of normal channels?”

  McHaffey nodded. He’d known it would turn out to be something sordid like this. Beside him, Tail was sniffing, as if smelling a rat. The dog flattened his ears unhappily and dropped onto his belly, nose between his paws. Something about it reminded McHaffey of his kitchen.

  “Ordinarily we’d use our own human resources maintenance staff, or the police, but she’s the keystone programmer, and our IPO of shares is scheduled for Friday. Alarming press leaks could affect the share value. You understand…”

  “I’m dreaming!” McHaffey announced, springing to his feet. Disconcertingly, his feet remained in the chair, along with the rest of him. No-one seemed to notice.

  “Defected, you think, or planning sabotage? Blackmail?” asked the seated McHaffey, while his disembodied self looked resentfully at the body that seemed able to carry on without him.

  “Oh, she’s not ambitious or anything,” said Cameron. “Like I said, she’s a programmer. You might have heard of her: Meaghan Greenslade. Apparently she’s something of a celebrity among the high-usage segment of our consumers. She goes by G-slade on the Net. About ten days ago she stopped turning up for meetings. It was assumed she was taking a break after the beta launch, but there’s been no communication from her. Frankly,” she said, dropping a few more decibels, “some of the directors would rather let things ride until after the IPO. They believe we should pretend nothing’s happened, in case an investigation stirs something up. I don’t like loose ends. I don’t know what the problem is, exactly, just that it needs to go away, quietly, quickly - before Friday. Will three hundred thousand be enough?”

  Stifling a choking sound, the seated McHaffey nodded and passed an account number from his pad to Cameron’s terminal. She didn’t need to know the account belonged to a convent in Prince Rupert, thought the ghost McHaffey. Cameron reciprocated, beaming an employee profile of Meaghan Greenslade back to McHaffey’s pad.

  The real McHaffey, the invisible one without a body, circled the desk, watching the transaction and disapproving of his body’s slouch. “I’m haunting myself,” he said, before considering again. “No, I was going into that game… multi-user environment… whatever. And this is all coming back, now. It all happened before. And next…”

  Greenslade’s condominium complex was an elaborate Neo-Deco affair with brawny, Atlas-like figures supporting the entrance. Tambunting, the nervous little superintendent with an unnaturally low hairline, ushered McHaffey gravely into his office while eying his visitor’s clerical collar, and his dog, but ignoring the ghost McHaffey that drifted around the procession.

  “Of course I can’t let just anyone wander into tenants’ rooms, er…”

  “Father,” the solid McHaffey supplied.

  “Yes. Father. With the police, you say?”

  Tambunting scanned McHaffey’s ID. He looked back and forth from the read-out to the man, as if trying to reconcile the sacred and the profane.

  “Missing, you say? Ms Greenslade, was it?” Tambunting tapped his screen while chewing his other set of nails. “According to our logs, Ms Greenslade is currently in residence. No harm in going up to inquire, I suppose.”

  The elevator slid silently upwards, with McHaffey luxuriating in the absence of stairs, or a body, to such an extent that he completely ignored Tambunting’s stream of bitter complaints about his least favourite tenants. In any case, the man was talking to the other McHaffey, not him. Twenty flights of stairs McHaffey had to climb every day at the Waterfront! On the other hand, he considered, glancing away from his doppelganger to Tambunting, there were no superintendents at the squat. And no rent to pay. Despite being a seething warren of layabouts and organic gardeners, the decrepit old hotel had seemed empty lately. His police-partner, Araxi, rarely visited him anymore, and she was even skipping work since moving into the Waterfront to be with her semi-vegetative boyfriend, Jo Creely, who still, after months, hadn’t managed to pull together all the bits of his mind scattered around the Net. McHaffey could only imagine what that relationship must be like. He rolled his eyes towards the elevator ceiling, and immediately hated himself, sneering at others’ relationships. He penitently resolved to see how they were doing, next chance he got. But he wasn’t going to visit Ms Tetsuyama, the hotel�
�s second weirdest resident. The less he knew about the septuagenarian’s intrigues and industrial espionage, the better, even if he did long for another taste of her indescribable curry bread. Musing on his invisibility, he considered sneaking into the old woman’s suite when he got home, before remembering he was in a simulation. A memory. Pity.

  The lift opened onto a luminous mural on the twelfth floor: a thin poplar tree in a meadow, leaves shimmering and hissing in a digital wind that swayed it languorously to and fro.

  “Best quality, that,” bragged Tambunting. “No pixilation, see?”

  McHaffey ignored the mural and floated to the apartment ahead of the superintendent. Greenslade’s door, adjacent to the mural, gave no response to Tambunting’s knocks, nor did anyone appear on the intercom.

  “I suppose we must check,” Tambunting conceded, placing his thumb on the lock scanner.

  They had descended three steps into the sunken living space, towards a neat desk that supported a bookshelf and the latest model workstation, when a motion caught McHaffey’s eye. Tail growled. Just as quickly, they and the solid McHaffey all relaxed, recognizing the movement as an ankle-high robotic doll from some movie McHaffey couldn’t recall. Not another tarantula, like at that domestic dispute a week earlier. The bandy-legged little doll in a black top hat and cutaway coat strode gravely over to them and bowed. Tambunting recoiled.

  “Madam is…is n…n…not receiving today,” the toy’s reedy voice announced, Englishly.

  Belying its reticence, the thing suffered a spasm and fell over, eventually mustering its self-control enough to stand and seize hold of the solid McHaffey’s trouser leg. It tried futilely to drag him away to his left. Tail inclined his head to examine the thing, and sniffed, looking unsatisfied.

  “Ah…ah… gentleman never loses his temper!” it said, falling over again. When the solid McHaffey was able to drag his attention away from the deranged puppet, he glanced to where it had been pulling him, where the real McHaffey was already looking, and where Tail pointed intensely. Tail uttered a short bark. Through the leaves of a luxuriant Schefflera, McHaffey saw a familiar pair of bare feet on a sofa.

  “…nothing like this before,” McHaffey half-heard the superintendent babbling. Tambunting crossed himself and milled about fretfully while, through a latex glove, the simulated McHaffey manipulated the dead woman’s ankle, and then her elbow, checking the rigor.

  “Dead a day or so,” McHaffey said, a moment before his recreated counterpart pulled off its gloves and repeated the assessment, pausing afterwards for a moment of silent prayer. The real McHaffey remembered. Have mercy upon her, pardon all her transgressions, for there is not a righteous man upon earth, who doeth good and sinneth not. A little uncanonical, he had to admit, but he’d never found anything that better suited the sad sight of an ended life.

  “Suicide, do you suppose, Father?” Tambunting speculated.

  It certainly looked that way. No signs of injury or struggle. Poisoning, perhaps. No history of sudden death risks on her medical file. The simulated priest drew out his pad. “Zhen Cameron,” he demanded. After the dialling, she appeared.

  “Capt… or rather, Ben. News?”

  “Greenslade’s dead. Could be suicide. No obvious signs of murder, anyway.”

  Or misadventure? McHaffey recognized the necklace half-tucked under the corpse’s collar as a game transponder, online perhaps when she died.

  A look of undisguised relief washed over Cameron’s face on the pad. “The poor girl. So young, and talented. Always quiet. I suppose that’s the type that, you know…” Cameron composed herself. “I assume you can take care of things discretely, to avoid any fuss before the exchanges close Friday?”

  The solid McHaffey checked his watch. Thursday afternoon, the real one recalled.

  “There’s got to be a death certificate issued and, given the circumstances, a coroner may want an inquest if there’s any doubt as to the cause of death.”

  Consternation re-appeared in Cameron’s expression. “I retained you to make this go away, Ben, at least until the weekend. If you can’t…”

  “Maybe,” offered the solid McHaffey. A full police investigation probably couldn’t sort matters out in a hurry anyway. He could arrange a day or two’s delay that might allow him to work out what really happened. McHaffey remembered being pretty confident of that. “But I need complete access,” the simulation continued. “Everything. Passwords. Greenslade’s level or higher, in the game too.”

  “It’s a multi-user environment, not a… all right, I’ll get you full access. Give me fifteen minutes. Cameron out.”

  The simulated McHaffey smirked at the blank pad, and at Trooper Cameron’s slip into her old phrase, while the real one frowned. I don’t really look like that, do I? he wondered. Tail looked up at him, whining. “I know, I should be working.” Perhaps he could, now that something like normality was finally returning to McHaffey’s mind, suggesting not only that he ought to be looking for evidence of suicide, such as a note, but also that he wouldn’t find it in a simulation constructed of his own memories. The point was underscored when he pulled a book off Greenslade’s desk – Transhumanism – and found all of the pages blank.

  “OK,” he said, addressing the ceiling, and then the walls, “that’s enough. I quit. Time out. Stop. Help!”

  Whichever word worked, the simulation first froze around him, then faded slowly through monochrome to blackness. Tail stepped out of his disappearing double, sniffed it, and growled. From out of the wall someone else appeared: slim, androgynous, in a black turtleneck and trousers. The newcomer approached McHaffey and smiled blandly.

  “I’m the Moderator. How can I help you?” it asked.

  “I don’t know how this all works,” McHaffey admitted, “but I’m looking for someone. How do I stop with the memories and do something else?”

  “Follow me,” said the Moderator, as it set off walking down a tree-lined lane that was materializing around them, leading to a stone cottage at the distant vanishing point.

  McHaffey had regained his body, he noticed. Other details were emerging too. Birds sang in the arched boughs overhead. The scent of roses came next, followed by hedges of the flowers on either side. In the lane a strange bush appeared which, when he was close enough to get a good look at it, McHaffey saw was growing strips of bacon from the branch tips.

  “Must be your fantasy,” he told the grinning Tail, who trotted up to the plant on which he then simultaneously nibbled and widdled. The rest of the landscape was nothing McHaffey could precisely remember ever seeing, and so it wasn’t from memory exactly. Yet it was familiar somehow. From his dreams? Cobbled together from things he’d seen, and admired, but never put together in his own mind? The sort of things he wished he could say he had seen, when he went to regimental reunions. Which was why he didn’t go.

  The Moderator was some distance ahead now, forcing McHaffey to jog to catch up with it.

  “This is the domain best suited to your happiness,” the Moderator said when McHaffey came alongside. “We’ll just walk up to the house. Sierra is waiting for you. She…”

  McHaffey recoiled, feeling like he’d been pole-axed. “Don’t…” he breathed. He took a fistful of the Moderator’s shirt front and pulled it closer. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  Looking slightly put out, the Moderator made a conciliatory gesture. “But, it’s what you want…”

  McHaffey shook his head and released the Moderator. “There are no ghosts to raise; out of death lead no ways; vain is the call,” he recited.

  “Beddoes? A gloomy poet. Is that what you believe this is? Dream Pedlary?”

  “Just get rid of it,” McHaffey commanded, waving a hand around the simulation. As though responding to the motion, it faded back into black void. “And tell me everything you know about Meaghan Greenslade’s death.”

  “G-slade is dead?” the Moderator said, its eyes round with the first show of real emotion the androgyne had given. It shudde
red. “Dead?”

  As it turned out, there wasn’t much the Moderator could add. Despite Cameron granting McHaffey total access, no amount of interrogation wrested from the Moderator any useful information about the dead programmer, only a reverential awe, made the stronger by the Moderator’s obvious shock at her demise. There were no recorded messages, no suicide notes left behind. No scenarios saved in the system - no traces at all. That in itself was even more suspicious than it was frustrating. Someone so intimately involved in creating the place had to have left a trail. McHaffey was beginning to regret his rash promise to keep Greenslade’s death under wraps until Friday. Surely Cameron wouldn’t have… no. She wasn’t capable of murder. But others could be.

  “Perhaps you could have sent word of G-slade’s death to the coroner by some faster means than mailing a letter,” the Moderator commented, or accused.

  The superintendent had been eager to offer the use of his franking machine for postage, even though he’d had to dust it off. And after all, the law merely required him to inform the authorities. It didn’t specify the method.

  “I turned the room temperature down to five degrees. The body will be fine,” McHaffey explained. Then it struck him. “Are you reading my mind?” he demanded.

  Almost imperceptibly, the Moderator shrugged. “Your mind is part of Transparadisium. As am I.”

  “What are you, exactly?”

  After a momentary pause, perhaps to check McHaffey’s access level: “You’re familiar with the concept of distributed computing? Every online user is evaluated for intelligence, sanity, and so on. In the best eight hundred a small region of the cortex is isolated and re-tasked to form part of my mind. The deficit is temporary and insignificant for the user. Collectively, they create… me. You could call me a child of mankind.”