Waking Hell

by Al Robertson

  As the wake started to wind down, she felt more able to ask around. Dieter had never mentioned Deodatus or his agents to anyone. Nobody had anything useful to say about the box. When she ran out of people to question she ended up talking with Miwa, Dave and Ambrose, breaking off for goodbyes when people started to leave as soon as they politely could. At last, it was just the four of them. Leila asked Ambrose to stay when the other two left.

  ‘I need your help,’ she told him. ‘I know how much you hate this stuff – but I’ve got to find Dieter. And apart from Deodatus and the pressure men, the box is the only clue we’ve got. Please could you take a look at it? Just for a moment.’

  ‘What about Junky Fi?’ asked Ambrose. ‘She’s the one that sent it to him. She should be helping you sort it out.’

  Leila smiled ruefully. ‘No she didn’t. Turns out she’s on a salvage contract somewhere out past Jupiter. Has been for months. There’s a four-hour lag on any communication with her and anything she says is heavily censored. Commercial confidentiality, apparently. I could hardly even talk about the weather with her. I’m sorry, Ambrose. It’s you or nobody.’

  ‘Gods,’ sighed Ambrose. ‘There really is nobody else, is there?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Ambrose bit his lip and looked away. Leila put her hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said gently. ‘I wouldn’t ask unless I really had to.’

  He looked back at her, doing his best to be resolute. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll do what I can. Show me the box.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Leila sent an internal recall order, pulling up Cassiel’s recreation of Dieter’s box. It leapt into being between them.

  ‘Fuck!’ shouted Ambrose, throwing up an arm to shield himself. Then he became a statue. Silver leapt out across his skin and clothes, freezing him in place. His voice cut out. Leila put a hand out to touch him. He was rigid, the metal that had been his skin freezing cold to the touch. She snatched her hand away and glanced back at the box. Her systems told her that it was a completely inert, entirely harmless simulation. But there was nothing else that could have triggered his reaction. She pulled it back out of existence.

  A moment or so passed, then his shields dropped. The silver melted back into flesh and fabric. His face was the first part of him to reappear. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said as he returned to normal. He staggered when the silver left his legs. ‘Dear me, Leila, that’s an evil fucking thing.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ stammered Leila. ‘I didn’t know. I mean – I don’t understand. It’s just an image. What harm could it do?’

  ‘The text on it.’ There was a hip flask in his hand. He tried to unscrew the cap. His hands shook. ‘Triggered my shields.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The precursor gods – the Pantheon’s parent companies, from before Station was even built – were heavily reliant on psychoactive tech. Like the damn thing that killed Cormac’s family. There was a lot like it about in the early days. It’s one of the reasons why InSec are so down on archaeology, why they keep the kind of thing we’re interested in offweave. People might find more of it.’

  ‘You didn’t mention this the other day.’

  ‘Didn’t seem relevant.’ At last he unscrewed the cap. It dropped into the grass. ‘If any of the symbols that Cassiel’s exposed had been visible on the real thing, InSec would have been all over you both.’ He took a deep swig of whisky.

  ‘So, what are they? Are they dangerous?’

  ‘Not on their own. But they’ve been seen before. On old, old, dark technologies. Artefacts that write commands directly to your mind. And so my shields went up.’ He drew on the little flask again. ‘I haven’t seen anything like that since the Lazarus Crew days.’

  ‘I never knew,’ said Leila.

  ‘We were very careful who we discussed it with. And Dieter was always so protective of you.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Leila remembered him glowering at lover after lover. ‘Typical big brother.’

  ‘And to be honest, it is terrifying. It might even be why we lost Earth. There was a lot of it live down there. One theory is that something psychoactive got loose, deleted history and nearly broke the gods.’

  Leila’s reply was instinctive. She’d had the story drummed into her so many times at school. ‘But we know what happened. The gods fought to free us from the war machines.’

  ‘That’s what they’d like you to think. Actually, they don’t really know what went on. Memories wiped. They might be the good guys, they might be the bad guys. Who knows? So they made up a story that makes them look good.’

  ‘I knew they were full of it, but that takes the biscuit.’ She thought for a moment. ‘So you think something psychoactive ate Dieter?’

  ‘No. That’s what’s odd. The deal he made is real. The money proves that. And there are pressure men running around and a Totality fraud investigator looking into it all. There’s a lot more to this than just that box.’

  ‘But it’s where it all began.’ Leila sighed. ‘Could you bear to have another look at it?’

  Ambrose went to stand. Leila reached down for him. His real age was suddenly visible in the slow, careful way he moved. ‘You’re a good friend. Dieter was too, once.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But I’ll be honest. All of this scares the shit out of me. It’s been years, and I still can’t even bring myself to decommission my shields. I just want to leave the past alone.’

  ‘You’re all I have, Ambrose. Cassiel’s doing her best, but I can’t see the Totality knowing much about deep Pantheon history. Nobody knows as much about this stuff as you do. Please, Ambrose. For Dieter. For me.’

  ‘Gods.’ Ambrose smiled weakly. ‘I’ll have nightmares for the next week, you know.’ He took a deep breath, then nodded. ‘Right, shields deactivated. Bring it up.’

  The box shimmered into being in front of them. Ambrose swallowed, then leant over to examine it. A minute or so passed, then he said: ‘Poor Cormac would have loved this. I wonder if Dieter worked out how old it is?’

  ‘As old as Station, he said. Maybe older.’

  ‘He was right. It’s amazing that it’s survived.’ He peered up at Leila. ‘If I wanted to get Dieter so excited that he’d drop his guard, this is definitely the sort of thing I’d choose.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You know, InSec really should see this,’ he said thoughtfully.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘We had a back door arrangement with them. If we ran into anything that looked too dangerous, we’d pass it straight over to their specialist. An Inspector Holt. He’s probably still there.’

  ‘Cassiel’s tried InSec. They blocked her. She thinks they might be corrupt.’

  ‘Ah, that’s just Pantheon and Totality politics,’ said Ambrose dismissively. ‘InSec will treat you very differently. First of all, you’re not a mind. And secondly, they’re on a big anti-fetch-hatred drive just now. They’ll be all over you. Probably turn it into a PR opportunity.’

  ‘So they’re definitely the best people to go to?’

  ‘For sure. Much better than me.’ Ambrose looked profoundly relieved. ‘Holt has to open a formal investigation if there’s even a hint of any psychoactive technology. And then he’ll have to start digging into Deodatus, checking out the pressure men and working out where Dieter’s gone. You’re on to a winner.’

  Leila wanted to make sure she’d exhausted all avenues of enquiry. ‘Is there anything you could do alongside their investigation?’

  ‘The only thing that could possibly help is my family firm’s search engines. They go far deeper than anything available to the public. If anything could find his weaveself, they could. But the firm manages them on behalf of InSec. They can only look for data related to live, official investigations. And once Holt’s on the case he’ll run searches of his own.’ He took a swig from his hip flask and smiled a relieved smile. ‘Probably even use our engines for it.’

  ‘
So how do I reach him?’

  Chapter 7

  The round and limited skies of Docklands had become an ocean, the Twins’ iconography engines starting their Taste Refresh Festival celebrations. Leila walked through quiet residential streets towards Inspector Holt, gazing up at the spectacle. Content micropayments ran out of her account without her conscious permission. Budgeting was no longer a concern. Shoals of fish swarmed lazily around the cylindrical city’s higher buildings. Brilliant reds and oranges clashed with softer blues and purples. Pastel subtleties were shot through with lines of electric brilliance. With every second of attention that she paid to the Twins’ display, extra details appeared. Seaweed billowed out around her, green as emeralds. Jellyfish pulsed into being, soft tentacles lazing out from round bodies shining with stained-glass brilliance. A lobster scuttled by. The voices of the Twins rose up in her ears, a single whisper twined together from male and female lips. ‘Together we provide… tasting better than it ever has…’ The air around Leila filled with soft blue, becoming water shot through with dapples of sunlight. The black O of space was invisible behind it all.

  This was too much unreality. A happy memory of Dieter struck her. Touching her black pendant, she shut down the Twins’ brand experience and opened herself up to the weave’s non-human layers. The air filled with digital song, the white goods of Station singing out to each other and to the providers that supplied them. Refrigerators summoned food, cookers shared recipes, cleaning units called for detergents, wardrobes propagated the latest trends. She remembered Dieter enthusing about them: ‘They’re as much part of the weave as we are, and they share as much data on it as we do. But nobody ever thinks to listen, nobody ever thinks to look.’ His eyes sparkled. ‘And there’s so much less security around them!’ He’d been so happy, poking around in their depths, understanding yet another hidden part of Station’s infrastructure. She smiled to herself, consoled by the past.

  Another few minutes, and she’d nearly reached her destination. The last time she’d been in an InSec branch she was picking Dieter up on his release from prison. She was still alive then. When she left college and he’d walked out of his job, an end-of-employment check had uncovered the changes he’d made to his medical records to avoid the Soft War draft. Falsifying personal data was a serious offence. But Ambrose had found Dieter a tribunal representative who’d successfully reframed the hack as an act of resistance to Kingdom’s corruption. So Dieter’s sentence had been short, a few months only. It had still felt like a very long time. Leila had waited in the dingy reception area until he came out of the door that led to the holding cells. She was so happy to see him. He gave her a hug the size of a planet.

  ‘Burger!’ he told her. ‘All I’ve been looking forward to. Apart from seeing you, of course.’

  Within minutes they were seated in a Twins burger joint and he was chomping his way through a meal. ‘I can’t believe these new names,’ he told her through a mouthful of meat. She couldn’t remember if he’d ordered a Grande Prison Break with Cheese or a Double Fuck You Animal Style. The burgers were the same ones he’d always loved, but their names had modified themselves according to his latest key life event. ‘At least the chips are still just chips,’ he joked, ‘not Crispy Tunnellers or Fucking Free Me Fries.’

  Arriving at the InSec branch pulled her back to the present. She caught a glimpse of another, equally dingy reception area. The duty officer sat in a secure-looking booth. Three sullen teenagers, their faces and knuckles bloody, stood next to a lightly armoured InSec street guard. Perhaps they were gun kiddies who’d got carried away. Then the Rose’s weave systems meshed with hers. All four of them disappeared as the god’s premium weave content kicked in and overlaid reality with illusion.

  Leila found herself standing in a light, airy room, tastefully decorated in a range of fashionable colours. Lights that had been hard fluorescent strips now glowed softly. The wire mesh that protected the booth disappeared. The strapline above it changed from Nothing to hide, nothing to fear to Your safety first, every time. Next to it, there was a shimmering message board headed For your consideration. It listed a series of different criminal cases, each followed by numbers. For a moment, Leila assumed that the branch was boasting about its clear-up rates. Then she saw that the numbers were headed Potential Commission. She knew that the Rose was happy to sell cases to private investigation businesses, paying out on their successful resolution, but she’d never seen a list of them before.

  She gathered herself and moved towards the booth, trying to look comfortable in this strange new world. She told the attractive young receptionist that she had an appointment with Inspector Holt. Of course there was no question of waiting in a public area. Leila was ushered straight into a meeting room, offered a seat on a comfortable sofa and asked if she wanted a drink. She turned down the offer and sat waiting for Holt. She thought through her strategy. The box should catch his attention straight away. She wondered about playing up the pressure men, but decided not to. Elusive stalkers with unusual fashion taste wouldn’t engage him in the way that precursor tech would.

  After a few minutes, he arrived. He was younger than Leila thought he would be, barely even in his late twenties. His skin had a grey tint to it and his glazed eyes spoke numbingly of stress and exhaustion. It took him a moment to register her presence. ‘Holt,’ he said. ‘Please, call me Avram.’

  They both stood there for a moment. The inspector had buttoned the front of his shirt all the way up. It gave him a very prim look.

  The silence started to become awkward. ‘Shall we sit down?’ asked Leila.

  He started. ‘Oh. Of course. I’m sorry.’ He moved to the opposite end of the couch and stiffly took a seat. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’ he asked, pulling a stylus and notepad into existence.

  It didn’t take long to explain the situation to him. Leila described her brother’s infection, the surprise of his true death, her meeting with Cassiel and her conversation with Ambrose.

  ‘Oh, Ambrose. Good of him to recommend me,’ Holt said. But he sounded nervous rather than pleased.

  ‘He thought you’d be the right person to talk to. To get the ball rolling. To find out what killed Dieter and where Deodatus has taken his weaveself.’

  ‘You do know that this Cassiel has already been in touch with us? I’m afraid that very little she had to say stood up to scrutiny. I’m not sure if there’s anything for us to look into here.’

  ‘I don’t understand. We’ve got a potentially psychoactive artefact and a possible financial fraud.’ She nerved herself. ‘And Dieter’s weaveself might already be damaged or lost.’

  ‘Let’s start with the fraud.’ Holt tried to sound soothing, but Leila sensed a jagged tension in him. ‘The Totality are facing serious financial issues. They’ve grown too fast. As a result, they dislike making major resource transfers to Pantheon citizens. They always try and throw a spanner in the works. Cassiel’s investigation into the pay-outs to you and the beneficiaries of the two other insurance policies is one of those spanners.’

  ‘So there definitely were two other Deodatus pay-outs? That means two other deaths, doesn’t it? She was pretty well-informed about that. And that still leaves the device that killed Dieter. Doesn’t that need looking into?’

  Holt shifted nervously and fiddled with his collar. ‘It was a piece of junk, left behind from another time. Your brother had a known interest in this kind of illegal technology. His luck just ran out.’

  ‘It came from an unknown source, who impersonated a friend of his to make him drop his guard. In its original form it was decorated with symbols linked to psychoactive technology. You have an obligation to check it out. And what if the other two were killed by something similar?’

  ‘They were both terminally ill,’ Holt replied. ‘Nothing suspicious at all. And I repeat, there is no evidence of fraud. Do remember that the Totality want to stop these payments. If they have t
o, they’ll bend the truth.’

  That made Leila pause for a moment. Perhaps Cassiel had lied to her. But her questions were making Holt very nervous. She felt that she was on to something. Remembering the commission list in reception, she decided to change tack.

  ‘The two other pay-outs,’ she said. ‘They’re real enough, aren’t they?’

  ‘Not as substantial as your brother’s, but yes.’ Holt nodded cautiously. ‘We confirmed them all.’

  ‘And if someone proved that all three were part of some sort of crime, then solved that crime – I’d imagine the Rose would offer a pretty substantial commission?’

  ‘In cases like this – that’s standard,’ he said carefully.

  ‘And anyone who invested in the case would get a share of it?’

  ‘Ms Fenech, what are you trying to say?’

  ‘Are you advertising the case? What if I tried to buy a stake in it? Bring in my own investigators?’

  ‘We’re not advertising it because we closed the case. And we closed it because there’s no crime here.’ He stood. ‘I don’t want to waste any more time on this.’

  Leila remembered the Totality lawyer. He’d told her that, now she was wealthy, she would find that she’d entered a new world. The new InSec branding she’d just experienced was one sign of it, the ability to put significant pressure on Holt without being threatened with a fine or arrest another. She decided to fully embrace it.

  ‘I have to find Dieter. I’m going to buy the investigation from you.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘You know how much I’m worth. I don’t care what it costs.’

  Holt blanched. ‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘It’s really not for sale.’

  ‘Bullshit. Everything is, these days. How much?’

  ‘I couldn’t…’

  ‘One million? Two million?’

  ‘No.’ He was trying to be firm. Numbers shimmered in the air, not quite falling into existence. Holt waved and they vanished.