Reality Hack

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Sandra told you that light exercise would be a good idea.’

  ‘Compared to my usual workouts, this is light.’

  He walked over as she squeezed her thighs together, checking the weights. ‘Really,’ he said.

  ‘Low weight, high rep. I don’t want thighs like tree trunks.’

  He looked down at her thighs. ‘You don’t,’ he said, before turning to the treadmill.

  There was silence for a while, aside from the squeak of the machine and the hum and rhythmic thumping from the treadmill.

  ‘Is everyone here some sort of magician?’ Nisa asked.

  ‘No,’ Kellog replied.

  ‘Norbery said he was a witch. What about you?’

  There was silence for a second and she thought he was not going to reply. ‘I practise Hermetic wizardry.’

  ‘Oh. Hermetic. Right.’

  ‘It’s a codified form of magic utilising the imagery of the Qabalah.’

  ‘That’s the Jewish mystical system, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, and she could have sworn he sounded just a little impressed.

  ‘So you use the Sephiroth as the basis for your spells?’

  ‘That’s the basis, yes. The public versions are not quite the same as the esoteric ones we use.’

  ‘So… there are more out there. I mean, there are a lot of practising magicians out there and no one knows about them.’

  ‘They know about them; they simply don’t believe in them. Most of the people out there are rational, which means that if they can’t explain something they rationalise it. Vampires are serial killers. Ghosts are delusions. Magicians are charlatans and tricksters. Even superstitious people don’t really believe in magic. They have their little rituals which they perform. They believe in them so they remember the times when they work and ignore the times they don’t. But if they were faced with a real magician, they wouldn’t believe it.’

  Nisa frowned and stopped her thigh presses. She had really done enough anyway. ‘So, those rituals… Do they work?’

  ‘Rarely, but yes. Anyone can work magic, Miss Harper. Some people are better at it than others.’

  ‘How long have you been doing it?’

  ‘About a decade.’

  ‘You must be pretty good.’

  There was silence again. Then he said, ‘I’ve barely scratched the surface.’

  June 12th.

  Nisa sat up in bed with a start, trying hard to get her breathing under control and forget the nightmare she had just had, all at the same time. It was not working especially well, but by the time the door opened and Sandra looked in, she was at least able to breathe more or less normally.

  ‘Nightmare?’ Sandra asked.

  ‘I get them. More than my fair share, I sometimes think.’

  ‘What kind?’

  Nisa looked at her. The question had sounded a little too direct. ‘Tonight it was being strapped to a table while dark, faceless figures walked around me, muttering in a strange language. Actually, something like that features a lot. Being watched, or tested. Sometimes there’s more pain.’

  Sandra gave a nod. ‘Do you want something to help you sleep?’

  Shaking her head, Nisa said, ‘No. I usually get back to sleep. Once I’ve got it out of my head.’

  There was another nod and the nurse retreated. There was the sound of the locks engaging and Nisa laid her head down. It was going to be harder to get the images out lying in a locked room. Well, she would just have to try.

  ~~~

  ‘So, what’s the assessment?’ The speaker was a woman in her middle years but still fit and attractive, if a little tired around the eyes. Her hair was grey, but that was more to do with stress than age. She was watching Nisa, back in the gym, on a monitor.

  ‘Physically she’s recovered well,’ Sandra said. ‘She’s fit, exercises regularly. She seems to be taking what’s going on in her stride. She’s inquisitive, obviously, but she’s also observant and retains information well.’

  ‘Magically,’ Norbery put in, ‘she’s off the chart. The System seems to like her. She’s got the highest tolerance for Probrum I’ve ever seen, enormous potential. She’s clean. There’s no indication of influence or malefic activities. The difficulty is going to be her… nature. She doesn’t have a style; she sees magic as… as hacking reality.’

  The grey-haired woman gave a grunt. ‘Not far from the truth. So she just wills things to happen?’

  ‘There seems to be some thought-forms involved, but that’s about the size of it.’

  ‘Kellog? You’re going to have to teach her.’

  ‘She talks too much,’ Kellog said from his place leaning against the wall beside the office door.

  ‘You don’t talk enough,’ Norbery commented.

  ‘More to the point,’ the woman said, ‘you need a new partner and getting one any other way is a pain in the arse.’

  Kellog sighed. ‘If she’s as powerful as Frank says, then we’re going to have to take her on. Reprogramming may not work. She may say no, of course.’

  The woman behind the desk looked down at the monitor again. ‘For her sake, I hope she doesn’t.’

  June 13th.

  Nisa was putting her exercise gear on in the hopes of going to the gym again when the door opened and Sandra walked in.

  ‘Forget that,’ the nurse said, tossing a bag onto the bed. ‘Put those on. You’re going to see the chief.’

  Frowning, Nisa dug in the bag, finding a pair of dark jeans and a cream blouse, and a pair of knickers which were really, really not the kind Nisa would have selected herself. She grimaced.

  ‘I know it’s not exactly your style, but I had to make do. You can’t go in athletic knickers.’

  ‘The jeans aren’t bad,’ Nisa relented. ‘I just wear skirts a lot.’

  ‘I had no idea what size bra you took either… Maybe I should’ve got a darker blouse.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I don’t wear bras much either. Exercise or bed, mostly. My boobs’ll probably be down around my knees when I’m thirty, but I’ve never liked the restriction.’

  Kellog walked in as Nisa was doing up the buttons on the blouse. He looked her up and down, noted her high-heeled clogs with dispassion but a slight pause, and then glanced at Sandra. ‘A darker blouse might have been appropriate.’

  ‘I know,’ Sandra whined, ‘but I was in a hurry. She’ll do. Hanson isn’t going to judge her on her wardrobe.’

  ‘No.’ He looked back at Nisa. ‘Come on,’ he said and turned around again.

  They went down the short corridor outside, past the gym, and through a code-locked door onto another, equally bland hallway. There he turned right, walked to the end which was all of twenty yards, and knocked on the door, not waiting for a reply before pushing it open and waving Nisa through.

  The office beyond felt more like someone cared for it than the rest of the place Nisa had seen so far. The walls were painted a mildly pleasant brown, heavy on the red, which made it feel warm. There was a big, oak desk, some filing cabinets, two chairs in front of the desk, and one big, comfortable-looking, leather office chair behind it.

  Sitting in that chair was a grey-haired woman who Nisa assumed to be Hanson. Somehow she had not expected a woman, but there she was, peering at Nisa with sharp, blue eyes. This, Nisa decided, was not a woman to be trifled with.

  ‘Have a seat, Miss Harper,’ Hanson told her. ‘I’m Melody Hanson, Chief Inspector Hanson, Metropolitan Police Exceptional Circumstances Unit. You’ve already met Detective Inspector Kellog. We come under the Specialist Crime and Operations Directorate, but you won’t find us listed, so don’t bother looking. We don’t, officially, exist. You are sitting in our base of operations, affectionately known as the Rabbit Hole for obvious reasons.’

  She paused and looked across the desk at Nisa, maybe expecting a response. Nisa decided she should give one. ‘I’m guessing that you deal with supernatural issues. It makes sense that you’d be… covert.’

>   Hanson favoured her with a slight smile. ‘Norbery said you were smart. He’s our forensics technician. He and Sandra are civilian employees. We have one other member you haven’t met, and that is XC. All of it. And we do deal with supernatural issues, and you present us with such an issue.’

  This time Nisa decided to remain silent.

  ‘Allow me to lay this out for you then,’ Hanson went on. ‘You are, potentially, quite a powerful magician. Left to your own devices, you could be no end of trouble.’

  ‘Why? I don’t see what the problem is. I mean, it’s amazing, wonderful, but I don’t see why it’s dangerous…’

  Hanson stared at her for a second and then said, ‘Your first choice then. This one is not irrevocable. Are you sure that you want to hear this?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nisa replied without hesitation, but a couple of second thoughts.

  ‘All right, here is what we know. The world around you, that which we call reality, is not real. It began around five thousand, seven hundred years ago, and everything before that is faked. It is a simulation, software. You, me, and everyone else are programs executing on some kind of computer within a simulated world.’

  Nisa gave her a half-smile. ‘Is this where you offer me a red pill and a blue pill and ask me to choose?’

  ‘No. There is no outside. Or rather, there must be, but you don’t have a body there being used to generate power. Ridiculous concept anyway. We’re software. We don’t know why, and we have no idea what purpose The System serves. Maybe it’s some sort of experiment, or some way of preserving what humanity was, or a game. We know this is not the first iteration of The System, however. There have been others, failures we assume, but whoever built this thing didn’t scrub all the old code, and like any software there are… defects.’

  ‘Bugs and Glitches,’ Nisa said.

  ‘Exactly. Magic is one of those defects, in a way. It’s… an access violation issue. Programs can sometimes access aspects of The System they shouldn’t, allowing them to violate the rules. This is a simulation, not reality. The physical laws, like gravity, are programmed elements of the software, not some inescapable law of nature. But The System doesn’t like that kind of thing. When it happens too much, or the Bugs become too noticeable, The System reacts. Usually the effect seems natural. Disease outbreaks, accidents, people die and the world keeps going. If it gets too bad, you get more drastic measures. The Great Fire of London was probably one of those. Some people suspect the Black Death was.’

  Nisa suddenly felt very cold. ‘And if it gets really bad… You said the earlier iterations were failures.’

  Hanson gave her a nod. ‘I see you’ve got the hang of it. You’re taking this very well.’

  ‘I’ll probably have a nervous breakdown later. You said you knew this stuff. How?’

  ‘The System has… agents. They take various forms and when they turn up it’s usually very bad, but occasionally they just talk. Putting together bits and pieces from throughout history and across the world… We’ve had five thousand years to work out what we can, and what we’ve worked out is that we need to keep a lid on this or The System will decide it needs to start with something new.’

  ‘Keep a lid on it…’ Nisa said slowly. ‘That’s where I come in.’

  ‘That, as you say, is where you come in. I can either use you or neutralise the threat.’

  Nisa did not like the sound of that last part. ‘Neutralise’ had a rather terminal ring to it, and she decided that finding out exactly what Hanson meant by that could wait. On the other hand…

  ‘You know, “use” has an unpleasant sort of connotation…’

  ‘Would you prefer “employ?”’ Hanson asked.

  ‘You’re offering me a job?!’

  The policewoman reached down to open a drawer in her desk, producing what looked a lot like a scroll and a small box which could have held jewellery. She placed them in front of her and then looked across at Nisa.

  ‘I’m offering you a contract, with menaces. You, me, and Kellog sign this and we have a deal. We train you, and you work for me. It’s dangerous work and the contract is for ten years. You read it before signing and make sure you understand what it means. Once you commit to this, there’s no going back.’

  Frowning, Nisa reached forward and picked up the rolled-up sheet of paper. It felt a little strange and she decided that this was actual parchment, not paper. The writing was small and spidery, but legible, and it started with a carefully phrased description of the process of signing the contract along with the results should any party in it fail to live up to the strictures listed below.

  ‘If I screw up, I suffer from chronic pain until I correct my mistake?’ Nisa asked.

  ‘The traditional version curses you with bad luck, but we’ve found that intense migraines are a better reminder,’ Hanson replied. ‘Tradition would also have you sign it in blood, but we’re happy with a Biro.’

  ‘Right…’

  There were a lot of rules about following orders, training diligently, and being available as and when required. It sounded like she was giving her life away, but she had to admit that her life was not exactly worth much as it was. Then there was the paragraph about the ring.

  ‘What’s this ring I’m supposed to have with me at all times?’

  Hanson flipped open the box. Inside, nestled into velvet, was a silver ring with a black stone mounted into it. The design was abstract, but also sort of Celtic, or some sort of ethnic style anyway. If she was going to have to wear it, at least it looked fairly good.

  ‘It serves a number of purposes. If you have to use a lot of magic, it makes you less noticeable to Bugs and reduces normal people’s reaction to the Probrum.’

  ‘Normal people can sense it?’

  ‘Not consciously,’ Kellog put in, ‘but they can feel something. It usually manifests as wariness. They think there’s something odd about you and react badly. The rings reduce that negative reaction.’ He raised his hand to indicate the one he was wearing with its red stone.

  ‘The rings also let us find you easily,’ Hanson went on, ‘which is why you’re not allowed to be outside of ten yards of it. We like to keep a tight rein on our people.’

  ‘Oh,’ Nisa said. ‘I don’t really want to know what the alternative is, do I?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you?’

  Nisa frowned and looked around at Kellog’s impassive face. ‘You’re on one of these contracts?’ He gave a nod in reply, and Nisa turned back to the desk and the waiting scroll. She picked up a pen that was lying there waiting and found the two lines at the bottom with her name printed above them. The second line was for the date and she realised she was not sure what that was. ‘Uh, I’ve kind of lost track of time. What day is it?’

  Hanson’s tone was flat as she replied, but there was a hint of amusement in it. ‘It’s Friday. June thirteenth.’

  Nisa winced. Oh that was just perfect. Swallowing hard, she reached out to sign her name on the contract.

  Part Two: Faline

  Tower Hamlets, London, June 21st, 2014.

  Nisa had been avoiding Black Light. She had got a couple of texts from Jenna and Lena, and a number of emails from Spike. Wallace knew neither her phone number nor her email address due to a process of carefully avoiding giving them to him, and of him not really caring because he was only interested in Jenna. She had claimed she was still not feeling great after what had happened and she would be back with the Hackers when she felt ready. In truth, she just had no idea what to tell them.

  Quitting Gun’s Kebabs had been easier. After what had happened, Mister Gun was fairly understanding when she said she did not think she could work there anymore. He had even offered her a week’s pay, but she had been magnanimous and said that she was leaving him in the lurch, so no. It had been easy to be magnanimous knowing that she was getting paid a police constable’s salary, which was not exactly riches aplenty, but it was way more than she had earned at Gun’s.

  She had bee
n told to take a week out to get her head together. Make sure she understood what she was getting into. Make doubly sure she had got that nervous breakdown out of the way. There were a few perks to help her on the way. One was a new smartphone which ran on the police’s Airwave network, but had some sort of extra encryption system which provided closed communication with Exceptional Circumstances. The second was a laptop, also connected via Airwave to the Rabbit Hole, which had to be unlocked by her thumbprint and let her browse the texts they kept on computer, rather than the ones they kept in a locked room. She had been referred specifically to the ones on police procedures. They were boring, but she had expected that.

  After a week of the inside of her flat, however, she was going stir-crazy and knew she had to face the outside world at some point. She picked up her new phone, unlocked it with a press of her thumb, and flicked through the contacts before hitting one of them.

  ‘Kellog.’ The word was snapped out tersely, though he had to know who was calling.

  ‘It’s Nisa, which you presumably knew. I wanted some advice.’

  ‘I’m your mentor. That’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘Right. This isn’t strictly about… that stuff, but it is, kind of…’

  ‘The point, Miss Harper?’

  ‘I need to get out of my flat. Go see my friends. I figure you’re not my social advisor, but… What do I tell them?’

  His answer came immediately. ‘You have a new job. While being interviewed over the shooting… You do remember the cover story?’

  ‘Yes. Perfectly.’

  ‘Good. While you were being interviewed, one of the officers mentioned a vacant position as a statistical analyst working for the Met. You applied and have been given the job. Given the rather rebellious nature of your male friends, there would be some natural reticence in telling them about it, which explains the delay in mentioning it. You were, of course, also in shock.’

  ‘You’ve thought about this pretty thoroughly.’

  ‘Someone has to.’ And the line went dead.

  ‘Well, that’s me told,’ she said to the empty room.

  Poplar.

  ‘So, you’re working for The Man?’ Spike said, his eyes narrowing across the table at Nisa.