Reality Hack

by Niall Teasdale

  Skinchangers were entities able to shift their forms without spells. There was evidence to suggest they had also been around since the beginning, though some were newer.

  ‘The most dangerous of them, the Skinwalkers, were once magicians,’ Kellog informed her. ‘The type name is a generalisation of that name. Somehow they internalised both the magic of the pelts they used and the spirit of the hunt they were meant to reinforce with their rituals. The result is an undead monster, able to steal the skin of anything and use it to change into that form. That includes replacing real people. They’re sadistic and they enjoy killing. Modern technology has just made them more dangerous too.’

  ‘Uh, how?’

  ‘Refrigeration. The skin they wear won’t rot, but they couldn’t easily store extras until we invented freezers. Now the damn things can swap forms whenever they want.’

  Spirits was a long subject. There were the defined ones: ghosts, elementals, and demons. Ghosts were the spirits of dead people, obviously. The theory was that a program was composed of two primary components, one directing the other. When the subsystem representing the body shut down, the mental, directing, component could remain active if there was a bug in its code.

  ‘Personally I think that’s not quite right,’ Kellog said. ‘I think the continued existence is intended, but they aren’t supposed to stay within this part of The System.’

  ‘So where are they supposed to go?’

  ‘Some form of limbo or purgatory. We know the essential components get recycled. Reincarnated, if you like. That doesn’t happen immediately so there’s a storage facility.’

  ‘You know this?’ Nisa had never really believed in anything beyond death. All that ‘past life experience’ stuff was hogwash and she certainly did not believe in Heaven.

  ‘Every spirit carries pointers to previous incarnations. That’s why past life regression actually works sometimes. Occasionally a spirit can access those memories without help, but that’s a bug. There are, maybe, a hundred, two hundred thousand basic personalities which get recycled and replicated to make up the whole population. Most of your personality comes from experience based on that basic set of characteristics. Your spirit is five thousand years old, but you are a unique instance of it.’

  ‘Oh,’ Nisa said.

  Kellog went back to the screen to explain that elementals were embodiments of not just the four, or five, elements everyone knew about, but also of other characteristics like hunger, lust, or anger. The emotional elementals tended to get called eidolons, but they were all elemental spirits.

  And then there were demons, which were able to materialise more easily than other spirits. Yes, they could be summoned and no, it was not a good idea. Get yourself in hock to a demon for power or wealth, or anything else, and it could pull your soul back to its home when you died. There was evidence that some Bugs were the result of spirits tortured by demons for a couple of centuries before getting returned to the pool.

  There were a few other spirit forms which did not fit any of the conventional types. Generally they went in for possessing the living or animating corpses, and most of them were malign. It was general policy to exorcise and destroy where they were found.

  Nisa had been expecting Kellog to go on to vampires, but the next slide was headed ‘Daath.’ She frowned at the word and the picture under it, which looked like something out of either an HP Lovecraft novel or a Japanese hentai movie.

  ‘Wizards call it “Daath,”’ he said, ‘but that’s just a name for things which aren’t meant to exist.’

  ‘I thought that was what Bugs were.’

  ‘Yes, but Bugs fit into The System, more or less, and these things don’t. These are entities that somehow manage to cross into the current iteration from previous ones. Exactly how that happens we don’t know. Daath entities can be just about anything from weird worm infestations to things with the power of gods. Glitches fall into the same category since they’re not meant to exist, but Glitches have no sentience.’

  ‘So Great Cthulhu really does wait in–’

  ‘Lovecraft made a lot of that up, but he heard stories from people who had witnessed a few things that were probably Daath entities. They aren’t common in this country. We get a lot more Glitches.’

  Glitches, it seemed, could take just about any form, but the most common was electrical disturbances. Modern science had come up with ways to deal with those, unless they were exceptionally large. The second most common were temporal anomalies, but those just manifested as images from the past appearing in the present. They were weird and occasionally caused accidents, but they faded quickly and there was no transference of matter in either direction. Nisa asked and even magic could not achieve genuine time travel.

  And then Kellog flicked over to the vampires slide, which showed a long list of different things vampires used to suck the life out of people. It started with blood, sure, but then there was ‘vital fluids,’ which was presumably not just blood, youth, breath, heat, fear, sex, bio-electric energy from the nerves, salt, sleep, ‘life force,’ and just about anything else. Each mechanism had its own vampire, which could be material, immaterial, or both.

  ‘If there are so many,’ Nisa asked, ‘how come we don’t see evidence of them?’

  ‘They’ve become very good at hiding their activities, or they always were. Lamias steal the breath from sleeping infants. They can’t affect anything older than about six months. The child appears to die in the crib and, now, we blame Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. If someone winds up in hospital because their neurotransmitters have been drained, or there’s almost no salt in their system, they’ve got some unknown medical condition. We’re exceptionally good at rationalising the unusual in this age of science. A couple of hundred years ago people would have been out burning the nearest old lady with a wart. Before that it was plague or evil spirits. Frankly, people have got worse at dealing with the supernatural as they’ve decided not to believe in it.’

  ‘You said the memory loss thing from the mind control was common,’ Nisa commented. ‘I guess a lot of them can swoop in, suck someone nearly to death, and leave, and the victim is clueless about what happened, like me.’

  ‘It is a common side effect, yes.’ There was just a little tension in his voice. It was barely there, but Nisa could hear it. He was anticipating a question and unsure how to answer it.

  She asked it anyway. ‘So, what kind attacked me?’

  Kellog just stared at her for several seconds until she began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. Then he said, ‘I was informed that telling you the exact nature of the vampire that attacked you would be… stressful.’

  Nisa blinked at him and then scanned down the list. She had not been bitten and her food had not been salty after the attack, and she had had no trouble sleeping. There was fear or the neurological thing, but what was stressful about that? If she had been terrified, she could not remember it. She had not been cold and she was still the same age and…

  Her eyes widened as it hit her. ‘Oh my God, I was raped.’

  Kellog took a step toward her, hesitated. His fists clenched. ‘I–’ he began.

  Nisa shook her head. ‘I don’t remember it. None of it. It didn’t happen.’ She wondered who she was trying to convince. Just the way he was acting suggested that her inference was correct. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Get on with the show.’

  He looked like he was going to say something else, but he turned sharply and clicked through to the next slide: more detail on the blood-drinking variety of vamp. Nisa settled down to learn.

  When he got to a slide labelled ‘Incubi and Succubi,’ he clicked straight through to the next one.

  Tower Hamlets, June 24th.

  Nisa woke up, biting back a scream, and fumbled for the light switch beside her bed. Her eyes flicked around the room, terror in them, but there were no faceless figures. She was not strapped to a bench, spread and open. They were not going to…

  She lay down and curled into a t
ight ball. Her stomach ached. There was still no memory of what had actually happened, but somehow that just made it worse. She was trying hard not to cry when she felt a hot tongue lick at her cheek and looked up into a pair of green eyes.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said to the cat. ‘I was… attacked by… You wouldn’t understand any of it, but it’s bad and I don’t… I don’t quite know how to deal with it yet.’

  Cat gave a consoling mewl, almost as if she did understand, and licked Nisa’s cheek again. Then she curled up against Nisa’s arm and stroking the animal between the ears seemed like it might help. Sleeping was going to be hard and Cat was warm and appeared to be genuinely concerned at her distress, and…

  The purring started, softly at first, but growing in intensity. Cat was happy and, somehow, that seemed to just soak into Nisa through the throbbing purr. The ache in her stomach subsided. She felt warm, loved. Her mind drifted with the rising and falling tone, and it felt good. And after a minute of that, Nisa drifted back into dreamless sleep.

  Westminster.

  ‘You look tired,’ Kellog commented when Nisa walked into the conference room.

  ‘Nightmare,’ Nisa told him. ‘I guess I went from the denial stage straight to depression. I woke up in the middle of the night from an even more twisted version of my usual nightmares. Thankfully cat purrs appear to be very soporific.’

  ‘The cat you found purred you to sleep?’ One of his eyebrows had gone up. Nisa had always been jealous of people who could do that.

  ‘Uh-huh. Thinking about it, she did it the first night too.’

  ‘Interesting. Also, I don’t think you skipped the anger phase. I still have bruises from yesterday’s judo lessons.’

  Nisa’s lips quirked. ‘You know, I didn’t think you had a sense of humour.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he replied, but he turned away quickly and she thought she saw his mouth shifting into a smile as he clicked the screen on. ‘You’ll sleep tonight. I’m going to shift the judo up a notch.’

  Tower Hamlets, June 28th.

  Hawgood Street was maybe four hundred yards from Leopold Street, if you could fly, and certainly within walking distance. It was part of a set of roads which marked the edges of Furze Green, a small park, and off the main roads, which had to have been useful if you kept a cat.

  Despite the short walk, Nisa felt like she had trudged miles. Despite Kellog’s best efforts, she had had two more nightmares during the week. Cat had lulled her back to sleep both times and Nisa had to admit that she was kind of hoping that Mrs Carew had not owned a black cat with vibrant green eyes… Because of Kellog’s enthusiastic judo training, Nisa felt like her back, especially her shoulders and butt, was one, livid bruise. They were doing ten hours a day, and then she was going home and spending four hours on magic and statistics. After that she was so exhausted that she was amazed anything had disturbed her, but still she had managed to wake up screaming, and Cat had been there to help every time.

  There was a ‘For Sale’ notice up outside the small house that Jennifer Carew had once occupied. The place looked empty and rather forlorn, as though it had been lived in and loved, and now its owner had gone and it was alone.

  Nisa walked to the next house along and pressed the doorbell. The man who answered it was wearing a T-shirt with the logo of an expensive gym on it, and jogging pants. He had the look of someone who paid cursory attention to his physique. His haircut probably cost more than Nisa’s old job had earned her in a week. Tower Hamlets had its fair share of up-and-coming types due to the proximity of places like ExCel. There was a lot of new building going on. This guy probably worked in the City, making money lending poor people’s money to richer people.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked in a tone that suggested she was already wasting his time. He was not impressed with her hair, or her cropped T-shirt, or her faded jeans.

  ‘Hi, I was wondering if you knew anything about your old neighbour, Mrs Carew. Like, did she have a cat?’

  ‘Who is it, honey,’ came from behind him, followed by the owner of the voice who turned out to be an attractive, busty blonde. No wonder he was unimpressed by Nisa’s slimmer physique.

  ‘She’s asking about the witch.’

  The woman, presumably his wife, gave him a playful slap on the shoulder. ‘She wasn’t a witch, even if she did have a cat.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you know what it looked like?’ Nisa asked. ‘I found a stray and someone suggested it might be hers…’

  ‘Black,’ the woman said and frowned. ‘It had really bright, green eyes. Um… Faline. She used to call it Faline. She died, you know?’

  ‘Yeah, I’d heard that. Heart attack, as I understand it.’

  ‘Summoning demons, more like,’ the man put in. ‘Woman was strange. So was the cat. Thing used to glare at me.’

  Nisa gave them both a smile. She felt like glaring at him too and she had only known him for a couple of minutes. ‘Thanks. That’s all I needed.’

  ‘And it used to get everywhere,’ the man muttered. ‘Seemed like it could walk through walls. You be careful. That cat’s probably possessed.’

  ‘Right,’ Nisa said. ‘Well… thanks.’ She turned and started back to the corner with Furze Street.

  Of course, the alarming thing was that the cat could be possessed, but somehow she was pretty sure that she was just a cat. And apparently she was now her cat because no one else owned her. There was Battersea… But there was no way she could do that to the animal. She really was going to have to invest in a litter tray.

  ~~~

  ‘Faline?’ Nisa called out as she walked into her flat carrying a plastic bag in which there was a litter tray and a couple of tubs of Sheba. In her other hand was a bag of kitty litter, and she felt like her arm was about to drop off.

  There was a prrt and the cat bounced onto the back of the sofa looking rather pleased. It was a sort of ‘Thank God, you’ve figured out who I am’ look, and that settled it if nothing else did.

  ‘Okay, so you’re Faline then.’ Another prrt. ‘Well, I guess you know that your old owner is dead…’ That got a rather mournful meow and Faline sagged down onto the back of the sofa looking distinctly sad. ‘I’m… uh, I’m sorry, but everyone dies eventually. I should really take you to a cat’s home, but… Well, you’ve been there for me and I guess… Look, I’m kind of assuming you want to stay here?’

  Faline lifted her head enough that she could tilt it quizzically. Well, of course she wanted to stay here. Had she not gone to all that trouble to get here?

  Nisa shook her head. The damn job was making her suspicious and she had not even started doing the real work!

  ‘Well then, to celebrate you moving in, I got you some nice food.’ Prrt! ‘I am not dancing through the lounge for this one though. I ache too much.’ Nisa started for the kitchen. ‘And you do know what a litter tray is for, right?’ Meow. ‘Good. I have no idea what you’ve been doing before now. The guy next door to Mrs Carew’s house said you could walk through walls…’ Meow-fft! ‘No, I didn’t like him either. And I didn’t believe a word he said, but I have this sneaking suspicion you left presents in his slippers or something.’

  There was no sound in reply and Nisa looked down to find Faline sitting near her feet looking like butter would not have considered melting in her mouth.

  ‘I am going to give you this food, and I am going to completely ignore the fact that you seem to understand every word I’m saying.’

  Prrt!

  Westminster, June 30th.

  ‘You know,’ Nisa said at lunch, ‘I was kind of expecting you to teach me some magic.’

  Kellog chewed his sandwich for a few seconds, swallowed, and then said, ‘First, we need you up to speed on police procedures and the kind of thing you can expect to meet outside this place. Second, a lot of the time the threats are physical, so we need you to have basic unarmed combat sorted. I know you’ve done some boxing, but throws and falls are more essential.’

  ‘And third,’ Norber
y added since he was sitting with them, ‘we have no idea how to teach you magic.’ Kellog scowled at him and he just shrugged.

  ‘A wizard and a witch, and neither of you can teach me any spells?’ Nisa asked incredulously.

  ‘He’s right,’ Kellog relented. ‘Magic is as much about… the way your mind works–’

  ‘Style or paradigm,’ Norbery put in.

  ‘That,’ Kellog went on, ‘as it is about knowledge. One of the reasons Hanson wanted you aboard is that you represent the new view of magic. This “Reality Hacking” you discovered is popping up in various places and it’s a different paradigm from the ones we employ. We can give advice, suggest things, and show you spells we can do so that you can attempt to do the same, but teach you? No, you’re on your own.’

  ‘You’re practising, I assume?’ Norbery asked.

  ‘Well, I’ve been summoning up lights.’

  Norbery gave Kellog a grin. ‘Energy summoning? Your favourite thing.’

  ‘She knows how to do it and it’s useful for more forceful countermeasures,’ Kellog replied, refusing to rise to the bait.

  ‘Then perhaps you should show her one of your more violent countermeasures.’ The witch turned to Nisa, adding a conspiratorial tone to his voice. ‘He just loves fireballs, so long as there are no witnesses.’

  ‘I guess that would be a bit of a giveaway,’ Nisa commented. ‘Chucking a fireball at someone isn’t exactly kosher science.’

  ‘More than that, it’s harder. People who don’t believe in what you’re doing make it more difficult to do it. That’s why I prefer more subtle effects. Things people won’t notice take less power and are easier to achieve. Because they aren’t seen, they produce less Probrum. Normal people are the eyes and ears of The System and letting it see you doing “unnatural” things is never good.’