The Process Server

by L.H. Thomson

  ***

  The elevator up to the penthouse was private and locked off but with predictably bureaucratic stupidity, VirtueTech had left the back fire stairs in when they’d coded the building.

  Of course, with a fire unable to do anything but scare the hell out of its victim in a virtual world, that particular security flaw was wonderfully, wonderfully stupid.

  Better yet: the door at the top of the stairs was unlocked, leading out directly into the lobby in front of the Penthouse’s main door.

  Jayde said, “It’s like it was meant to be. So do we just buzz in, or what?”

  “I guess.” I didn’t really know what else to try. There was no guard in the hall, and a ton down stairs. But presumably people came up here to visit occasionally.”

  I pushed the com button and after a few seconds, the monitor filled up with face of a 20-something, blonde-haired young guy with a bright shining smile and a pair of retro sunglasses. “What’s up?” he said.

  “Uh… Prognosticator?” I said quizzically.

  “Yeah. Like I said, what up’s my brothers?”

  “Prognosticator, we need to talk to you.”

  “Thaaaat’s … what we’re doing.”

  “In person.”

  “Oh.” He looked puzzled for a moment. “No one’s done that in months.” He’d been online for a few days of real time, then, at least.

  “That’s because you’re on MultiNet time, sir,” Jayde volunteered. “That’s one of the things we need to talk to you about.

  A few seconds later the door slid open with a hiss.

  We walked into a bright, whitewashed corridor with art on both walls. After about 20 meters, it opened into a large open plan layout.

  In the center, a glass cubicle room ran a persistent Scenario, invisible to the outside through the smoked glass, a scenario within a scenario.

  His voice came over the intercom. “Come on in!” This time, double doors slid aside. Past them, the scenario appeared to be a tropical garden.

  We walked in, and the doors hissed closed behind us, seemingly disappearing completely as the depth-of-field settled in, making the area seem to extend for miles in every direction.

  “It’s my own design,” the young man said. “I call it ‘Eden’.”

  The name was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Jayde was ahead of me. “Like the Garden of Eden, in the old Bible?”

  He nodded and smiled, getting up to greet us. It was warm, like the Morocco overlay. “Jasper March. Please, join me for a beverage.”

  He looked at his wrist and tapped on invisible keys with his other hand for a moment. The room scenario pitched and morphed, “I’d close your eyes for a second,” he said. “The sudden shift can be kind of stomach turning.

  I complied, and when I reopened, we were in an Earth nightclub, replete with cream-colored leather booths, a raised area, and a large central dance floor and orchestra pit, both looked over by the room-wide stage.

  I looked at him quizzically.

  “Roaring Twenties, Speakeasy, see?” he said, smiling. We walked over to a booth and sat down. A waitress in a flapper dress came around to take our order, and a girl arrived with a tray of packs of cigarettes and candy.

  The room was busy, and after a few minutes, an announcer went up to the main microphone. “Ladies and Gentlemen I don’t we need any introduction for tonight’s performer. He’s the ambassador of Harlem, Mr. Cab Calloway and His Orchestra!

  Calloway entered staged right in a white tux and tails, his hair a slick mop, his trademark pencil-thin moustache in place.

  “I love this era of music,” the Prognosticator said, tapping his fingers in time to the music as the band started out with “Minnie the Moocher.”

  I didn’t bother telling him Calloway came a decade later.

  The waitress brought our drinks back and the Prognosticator downed half of his in one gulp. I held mine in both hands and watched him for a few moments as he studied the band and the rapidly-filling dance floor.

  “Don’t you worry? I mean, don’t you worry about spending so much time logged in? About addiction?”

  He just smiled and laughed. “No.”

  I waited for a further explanation but he didn’t offer one, so I asked.

  “Why? Everyone else seems to have a hard time spending the equivalent of weeks in the MultiNet.”

  He shrugged. “I’m the Prognosticator.”

  Ah. Well, obviously, right. Yeesh.

  “No, really, what is it?”

  March looked at Jayde, who had been quiet since we’d entered. “Ask you friend. She knows.”

  All three of us were silent for a moment, and I stared Jayde down. “You know what he’s talking about?”

  She nodded, “I think, yes. He’s talking about self-reliance, self-confidence. If you don’t need other people – I mean if you truly feel you could do as well on your own, if say everyone else disappeared overnight you’d keep fighting – then you don’t need that thing, that communal belief. You don’t need a false sense of security.”

  It made sense, in the context of his faith’s book. I’d read the Handbook while younger. “So the MultiNet’s allure is that you’re included?”

  March nodded. “You belong when you socialize online, because the rules are rewritten from real society. There is no dog-eat-dog on there. Social conflicts, the type that may prompt behavioral chance? They don’t exist. People login as different people, with different and conflicting beliefs, and they simply stay that way, forever. Stagnant, but safely aware of one another.”

  I thought about it. “Is that so bad, living your whole life with that stability? That belief in something permanent, even if it really isn’t there?”

  March smiled. “When you can answer that, you’ll know why your friend and I sit here, unaffected by the delusion.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to. But there was something wise in his words, and in how he delivered them. “You really dig this whole ‘head of a religion’ thing, don’t you?”

  He smiled. “We’re not a religion, we’re a faith. I’m ... sorry, who are you two?”

  We introduced ourselves and he took on a knowing look. “Ah, the Process Server and his assistant. We’d heard you were in town.”

  Jayde flashed annoyance. “Pilot.”

  “Quite,” said March. “Pilot. Yes, well, the two of you have been making a lot of noisy inquiries since you arrived, and I make it my business to know what’s going on, especially in New Tokyo. You were looking for the now-deceased Archivist of G’Farg Station.”

  I frowned. “You know about that?”

  “I know about it. Don’t know who killed him but I understand Sector Police are looking for two suspects to interview who sounded suspiciously like your descriptions.”

  Jayde said, “We thought perhaps whoever it was had been looking for you. Maybe someone annoyed with your revisions to the Handbook?”

  Calloway’s band was playing a Dixieland style swing jazz tune called “Reefer Man” now.

  “Have you ever met that funny reefer man?” Calloway sung to his band, baton flying. “That funny, funny, funny reefer man. If he trades you dimes for nickels, and calls watermelons pickles, you know you’re talking to that reefer man!” And then a long clarinet solo ensued.

  The Prognosticator looked at Jayde, changing the subject for a moment. “There’s something different about you. About the way you carry yourself.”

  She replied, “Have you ever heard of the RDHs?”

  He nodded, smiling. “There are two others like you that I know of, preserved in time as it were.”

  Jayde’s eyes widened. “You sure? I thought I knew about the rest of the reclamations. Thought it was just the few geezers hanging on.”

  He nodded. “No. There’s a pirate operating out of Deneleth System who looks about 16 or 17 but is apparently nearly 250. Roguish young fellow, as you’d expect. Never did find out why he was cryogenically preserved, apparently, and has no me
mory of his childhood.”

  Jayde said, “It sounds like you know him well. If I needed to contact…”

  He held up both palms and just shook his head twice for “no.”

  When you’ve been around for as long as Jayde, you recognized the futility of the post- “no” debate. But she had an interesting look on face as she pondered the possibilities.

  And it refocused her on the matter at hand, and as I’ve noted before, she can be a tenacious woman.

  “Not to jump all over the place conversationally, Prognosticator March,” she said, “but why did the Archivist think you needed so much security?”

  He looked puzzled for a moment then smiled broadly. Then he laughed and tossed back the rest of his virtual scotch and soda. He looked up and said “God truly works in mysterious ways.”

  Then he turned back to me. “Process Server Smith, I have to say that when the Archivist asked us to accommodate his security, we were as puzzled as you. But I spent several hours in conversation with him, with respect to our mutual business of reaffirming the Handbook’s intergalactic copyright.”

  I nodded. “Ok. So how does that help us?”

  March smiled. “It doesn’t, in and of itself. But we discussed security, and he let slip that he’d had a colleague killed back on G’Farg. It seemed very important to him that he not suffer the same fate.”

  Jayde said. “Yeah well, spend enough time in the real world and you get partial to living.”

  He smiled. “As I said before, Ms. Chen, I’m well aware you and I share the same lack of requirement for social acceptance. So believe me when I say I know exactly what you mean.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, yes,” he said. “I did say there were two other RDHs, didn’t I? I think you’d be surprised exactly how much we do share.”

  The implication hit her and Jayde looked stunned for a moment. “You’re ..”

  “228,” he said, not looking a day over 27.

  She didn’t know what to say. It had been a long time since Jayde had met another person like her. “I have a lot I should probably ask you,” she said.

  “And I you, Ms. Chen. Unfortunately right now is not the time, due to exigent business issues. Rest assured, however, that I will be back in touch with you.”

  Was he …flirting with her? I had to resist my parental urge to intercede. Geez, it felt like he was about to kiss her hand or something.

  “In the meantime,” March continued, “what I can tell you is that the colleague’s homicide was apparently quite high-profile, so you should have no problem finding out more about it.”

  He turned back to the stage, where Calloway was finishing up his number. Then March signaled to the cigarette girl for a pack of Lucky Strikes.

  “I wouldn’t do this with the Followers around, because it gets them thinking about doing it in the real world, and the history books are full of data on how that turned out, the tens of millions who died monthly due to the scourge of second-hand smoke.”

  Jayde shot him a dirty look. “But you know that’s not true, that history has conflated it because…”

  He looked pensive, without being brooding. “Because there was absolutely no redeeming quality to them. They just killed people. Oh sure, the non-believers online now love to do it, because it’s cool and it seems consequence free. But in the real world, there are … there were consequences.”

  She snorted derisively. “Sure, in the thousands annually. But that’s not millions. Why lie about it now?”

  He was unfailingly unflappable and cheerful. “Perpetuating a lie that is so much better, so much more effective than the truth? That’s not always such a bad thing, you know, Jayde. I should have thought you knew that. I mean, look at this place: this very room is actually no different in appearance or function from its real-world equivalent, in New Tokyo. It’s a lie; and yet it’s harmless – productive, even.”

  But she was unimpressed. “We’ve both been around a long time, Prognosticator March,” she said formally. “Perhaps I’ve just learned something you haven’t yet.”

  He looked down, as if a little embarrassed. “Forgive my arrogance. In truth, it’s not an issue to which I’ve sat down and given much thought. But we keep an open mind in all things.”

  I nodded at him. “Except God, right Prognosticator?”

  He shook his head. “Especially God, Smith. Especially God. And once again, when you get that, well …” he looked around us at the club. The glitz, the glamor. “… when you get that, Smith, you won’t be so easily tempted.”

  I looked at Jayde. “Looks like we’re headed back to G’Farg Station.”

  “How are we gonna pull that off, exactly?” Jayde said. “This little venture has already cost us the few creds we had. We hardly even have enough fuel left to get us off planet.”

  The Prognosticator smiled. “I think I can help with that. After all, we’re not without our resources, when necessary.”

  I gave him a stern look. “So we’re working for you now? I don’t know about that.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll make you a deal. You get your hands on whatever secret the Archivist was protecting, and I’ll guarantee you the 10,000 creds you were supposed to be paid for serving him in the first place. In the meantime, I’ll loan you 5,000 for expenses. That should keep you going for a while.”

  If I gave most of it to Fesker Munch, it would keep him off my back for a week or so, too. What could it hurt?

  I extended my hand and the Prognosticator of the Followers of the Handbook of Joshua shook it firmly, smiling. Then he added, “Pleasure doing business with you.”

  I nodded. “We’ll see, kid. We’ll see.”