Cole Perriman's Terminal Games

by Wim Coleman

  The Omaha detective went on to say that the local archdiocese was trying to help them locate the church shown in the animation.

  “I’m gonna give you another name and phone number,” Nolan said. “It’s another guy in Omaha who’s a member of the same network. We’ve got reason to think that he might be involved. But I’m sorry to say we haven’t got anything for you to haul him in on.”

  “No probable cause, huh?”

  “Hey, we’re out here in L.A., remember? You’d better check him out, though.”

  Kelsey promised to let Nolan know how it worked out. Nolan hung up.

  Oregon. Just keep thinking about Oregon.

  Then he phoned Marianne and passed the news on to her.

  *

  Marianne walked her Renee alter over to a booth in Ernie’s Bar and pressed the keys admitting her to the private space. She had earlier come on Insomnimania as Elfie, but had not been able to find Auggie anywhere.

  After the snuff last night, she had slept briefly and fitfully. Tonight she’d been too restless to consider going to bed. Now she felt as if she might drop off to sleep at any moment, but she was sure that if she shut down the computer she would soon be pacing the floor again, wide awake.

  The Renee alter was just sitting there in the booth, looking bored.

  “Let’s go somewhere more interesting,” Marianne said.

  Thinking as little as possible, Marianne allowed her fingers to type Renee’s response, allowed her voice to read the words aloud.

  “Where do you have in mind?”

  “The beach.”

  “I don’t think I can make it anywhere outside the box here.”

  “What box?”

  “Your computer.”

  “No, silly. I mean Babbage Beach. The one right here in Insomnimania.”

  “Now that’s a great idea.”

  Marianne steered the Renee alter out of Ernie’s, back to the maze, and to the icon for Babbage Beach. She double-clicked the beach icon, and the image of Renee was immediately standing on a yellow-sand beach. Renee was facing away from her. Marianne felt as though she was looking over her friend’s shoulder at a late afternoon sky filled with a preposterously outsized orange sun. While the real sun always looked like a flat bright disk tacked onto the sky, this simulated one appeared to be a palpable, rounded ball with a light source other than itself.

  The ocean undulated like the surface of a waterbed as the sky, sun, and clouds shimmeringly reflected in its surface. The ocean’s ripples grew in size and acquired expanding tufts of white as they approached the screen.

  A short way ahead was a red-and-white beach umbrella.

  “Let’s sit there,” Renee said. “Then we can talk privately.” Marianne knew that the beach umbrellas operated the same as the booths in Ernie’s, shielding conversation from all outsiders.

  It seemed to her that Renee walked through the sand very naturally and sat down under the umbrella quite under her own power. Marianne felt like she was just tagging along behind, not directing the action—especially when Renee took off her shoes and rolled up her red slacks.

  But are there any such commands? Was she actually watching this picture on the screen, or was her imagination creating all this in a near-dream state? She decided it would take too much concentration to decide. She didn’t care where the scene came from. She was here. And an image of Renee was right in front of her, her red slacks rolled up to her knees, wriggling her bare toes in the sand. This didn’t have to be real. Marianne just wanted it to seem real for a little while.

  The outsized, nursery-school sun slipped slowly toward the horizon, partially masked by slender, horizontal threads of clouds.

  Marianne asked, “What are those clouds in the middle, Renee? Cirrus?”

  “Don’tcha remember anything from school?” Renee replied. “Cirrus clouds are way up there. Can’t even see ’em from here. Top of the screen cuts them off.”

  “So what are these then? Stratus maybe?”

  “Wrong again, helium breath. Stratocumulus.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “I know my clouds, dearie.”

  “Where are the stratus then?”

  “At the very bottom. Next to the horizon. See?”

  Renee pointed to an unbroken layer of clouds just above the horizon.

  “Those are nimbostratus.”

  “Wanna put money on it?”

  “Okay. You’re on.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten dollars.”

  “Cheapskate. You must know you’re gonna lose.”

  The clouds chugged silently across the sky, much faster than real clouds could go, changing color as they went. At the screen’s far left, the clouds made their entrances a silky white, growing more yellow as they approached the edge of the orange ball, turning a startling complementary blue as they crossed over it, becoming gray as they passed across the sky again, and finally settling into smoky blackness before exiting at the right-hand border of the screen.

  The white-capped waves broke in irregular patterns against the shore, raising zesty sprays of silver pixels and a chorus of white noise. The white noise was actually a constant undertone, roaring into a crescendo with the crash of every wave. The noise lulled Marianne hypnotically. She was having trouble holding her eyes open.

  Then, turning around to face Marianne, Renee said, “Listen to those waves. I think that’s the most beautiful sound in the world.”

  “It’s just white noise,” Marianne said.

  “I know,” replied Renee. “But it’s magical just the same. I like to sit here and imagine that it’s all the signals, all the messages being transmitted in the whole world at this very minute—every television, radio, or telephone signal. If you listen, you can pick out some little piece of it. Listen. Listen real carefully. You’ll hear a daughter talking to her mother for the first time after ten years of estrangement. They’re making up. They’re becoming friends again.” Renee rotated to face Marianne. “Can you hear it, too?”

  Marianne’s eyes rolled back under her eyelids. She felt her lids droop shut. Even so, the seaside scene was still vividly painted before her. The lowermost edge of the sun had just touched the horizon now. Pretty soon, the great orange ball would disappear behind the sea. She felt too exhausted to go on with this taxing form of self-hypnosis. But she followed Renee’s injunction to keep listening. The computerized noise was evocative—much like a conch shell’s whispering “sea” sound.

  And yes, it didn’t take much imagination to hear two women’s voices in the slow, rhythmic surges of white noise. Marianne couldn’t make out their words, but both women were weeping for joy. Other conversations could be heard, too—many of them not nearly so conciliatory. There were business calls, bits of idle gossip, lovers’ quarrels. And there was music, too, ranging from a Bach two-part invention to a rap song. Indeed, the surf did seem to contain an entire world of electronic messages, some sweet, some vindictive, but all reflecting an aching, universal loneliness—and all purely imaginary.

  A flock of seagulls swept across the sky. The sun, which had just disappeared below the horizon, reappeared at the top of the screen and began its descent again. Marianne could barely feel her fingers fluttering across the keyboard as she tiptoed around the fringes of unconsciousness.

  Am I even still awake? Am I actually dreaming?

  It didn’t feel as though she were dreaming. Her dreams were less vivid than this—and certainly less colorful. Also, there were still hints of electronic artificiality about the scene. Marianne observed that the sun did not play on Renee’s face or reflect in her eyes, nor did the wind move her hair.

  I forgot to give her sunglasses. But of course, Renee wasn’t squinting. A puppet had no sensitivity to sunlight.

&n
bsp; “What are you thinking about?” Marianne asked her pensive virtual friend.

  “I often sit here and try to remember what the real ocean looked like,” Renee said.

  “What do you mean, ‘often’?” Marianne asked.

  “A lot,” Renee said. “Frequently. Routinely. Usually. What do you think I mean?” Marianne could hear a bit of Renee’s old wise-assedness pipe up.

  “Well, what I mean is you haven’t even been here all that long.”

  Renee looked straight at her, her lips frozen in a partial grin, but her eyebrows tilted in uncertainty.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Don’t you know how long it’s been since you were killed?” Marianne asked.

  Renee’s laugh trumpeted sarcastically over the computer speaker. Marianne realized she must have dazedly struck the command for laughter. “Don’t pussyfoot around, dearie,” Renee said. “Go ahead. Ask the really tough questions.”

  “Sorry.”

  Then Renee’s smile disappeared. “Your whole idea of making me up was so I’d seem alive, right?” she snapped, looking straight into Marianne’s eyes with startling ruthlessness. “Why fuck it up by bringing my death into it?”

  “I said I’m sorry.”

  Renee was brooding now, running her finger through the sand. No furrows appeared in the sand where Renee’s finger passed. Marianne felt a pang of guilt at having been so insensitive. Her apology did not seem enough. She felt compelled to do something more to put things right. She tried in vain to remind herself that none of this was real, that she owed no explanations, no apologies to an electronic puppet. But she was in too deep. It seemed too real.

  Marianne wanted to reach out and hold Renee’s hand. But she was all too aware of the surface of the screen between them. She and this image could share all kinds of dreams and memories, but they couldn’t do one terribly important thing. They could never touch.

  Marianne was seized by a spasm of sleep. She struggled to keep her balance, fought not to fall from her chair. Her eyes fell heavily closed. She drew in her breath. Then she heard Renee calling from the depths of darkness, her voice echoing out of a long tunnel.

  “Marianne? Marianne! Are you still there?”

  “I’m ... still ... here,” Marianne heard herself murmur. Then, with a tremendous effort, she yanked her eyes open. Renee was staring at her with a look of benign, smiling concern.

  “Are you okay?” Renee asked. “Thought I’d lost you for a minute.”

  Marianne tried to answer, but found that she couldn’t. Renee leaned toward her, her eyebrows knitted together with concern.

  “Marianne, what’s the matter?” Renee asked. “You’re crying.”

  Marianne fingered her cheeks and discovered that they were wet with tears. She had no idea why.

  “Why are you crying?” Renee insisted firmly.

  Marianne was surprised at what she said next.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there that night. I’m sorry I didn’t stop your killer.”

  She hung her head, choking on her sobs.

  “I want to touch you,” she said.

  Renee’s smile seemed to broaden sweetly.

  “Marianne, there’s no one to touch,” she said. “There’s no one here at all. You’ve got to get a grip on your imagination. You’ve got to get some sleep.”

  Marianne nodded dumbly. She could not argue with that. She said goodbye to Renee and shut down her computer. She got up from her chair, feeling like she was rising from a dream. Then she walked slowly and unsteadily down the hall toward the bedroom.

  11000

  INTIMATIONS

  “The Abernathy project looks great,” said Dwayne over the phone. “I just got a chance to go over it thoroughly yesterday. You’ve really outdone yourself this time, kid.”

  “Thanks,” Marianne replied. “I’m sorry to have taken so long with it.” She had turned in the Abernathy project at the meeting on Wednesday. Now it was late Friday afternoon. She had spent the whole day on the new office project and had just modemed some designs over to the office. She wondered what Dwayne thought of that one, or whether he had even gotten a look at it yet.

  “We all understand,” said Dwayne warmly. “We appreciate your coming through with the work despite your grief and everything. It must have been rough as hell.”

  “Still, I wanted to get it done.”

  “It sure looks like it was worth the wait. The Abernathys are going to love it.”

  “That’s nice to hear.”

  “Speaking of getting it done—you sent some preliminaries on the Carswell office over today. Isn’t that a little premature?”

  Marianne took a deep breath. “Yes, well, I was hoping someone else could finish it,” she said.

  “We were kind of looking forward to having you do the whole job,” Dwayne said, sounding distressed.

  “Surely my preliminaries are enough for somebody else to work from.”

  “Even so—”

  “Isn’t anybody else free?”

  Dwayne groaned slightly. “Sure, there’s Paul. He could do it in a pinch.”

  “Dwayne, I’d appreciate it,” Marianne said. “I need some time to … sort things out.”

  “Marianne, I don’t mean to sound callous, but how long has it been since your friend died? Two weeks?”

  “Almost three,” Marianne replied. “But I’ve been doing my best to get my work done during all that time, and it’s been awfully stressful. I think I deserve a little time off. I’ve got a lot of vacation days coming.”

  “Point well taken,” Dwayne said pleasantly. “Okay. It’s not a great time, but I guess it never is. Take as much as you need.”

  “Thanks. Give my best to everybody at the office.”

  “Sure will.”

  Marianne hung up the phone.

  “Take as much time as you need,” Dwayne had said.

  Dwayne assumed that all she wanted was a little time for rest and recuperation. What she actually wanted was time to contend with Auggie, to work her way closer and closer to him, to learn his secrets, and stop him from killing again—to destroy him, if it came to that. And how much time would that take? A couple of days? A week? A month? The rest of her life?

  Will I have a job waiting for me when this is over?

  Then she almost laughed at her misplaced concern. What kind of threat was getting herself fired in comparison to getting herself murdered? Unemployment and death both loomed over her life right now—and which of the two did she really find more dreadful? If Nolan was right—if Auggie could have stolen her password and found out who she was and where she lived—then she might already be in danger. Even more chilling, Marianne suspected that Auggie had no need to steal her password.

  Paradoxically, Marianne’s most vivid cyberworld experiences were the most obscure in some respects. Insomnimania took on reality for her in the quiet hours after midnight, when she was very tired, when her subconscious was at its most active. At those times she could hear the typed-out conversations, rather than just reading them from the screen, and the characters seemed alive and autonomous.

  Marianne knew that the effect must be an illusion, created by a state of self-hypnosis brought on by exhaustion and by desire. She also knew that she couldn’t remember every bit of the conversations she had in that state. Judging from her Pleasure Dome experience, she might have told Auggie her most secret sexual fantasies. What more mundane clues had she given that would be of use to a superhacker? She might also have told him her password or her real name.

  Nolan had protested her roaming about Insomnimania because he was afraid that Auggie could learn her identity. If she explained the true nature of her participation there—and her suspicions about Auggie’s ability to scrounge information—he wo
uld certainly insist that she cancel her Insomnimania membership immediately. But Renee had resigned from Insomnimania, and that hadn’t saved her life.

  Besides, Marianne was convinced that her half-remembered sessions were building a unique relationship with Auggie, that she had a kind of access to him no one else had. He seemed ready to take her into his confidence. And she was gaining some concept—if only a vague one—of just how powerful and mysterious Auggie was. No one else had any idea. Nolan was a good cop and a wonderful man, but he was too used to thinking like a cop to understand Auggie. So was everybody on his team. They were all logical and methodical, and Auggie lived in a world where logic and method had very little meaning.

  In last night’s session on Babbage Beach, she and a “virtual Renee” had talked. Whether the computer network gave life to the fantasies of her own mind, or whether it allowed her to venture into the fantasies of another mind, it provided a place where things actually happened—events with their own kind of truth and meaning. That was the world where Auggie lived, and whoever stopped Auggie would have to do it there, on Auggie’s own terms.

  It’s got to be me. I’m the only one.

  It felt good to have all her obligations out of the way, to be able to devote herself single-mindedly to the task at hand. And despite (or perhaps because of) her commiseration with Renee last night, Marianne felt profoundly rested today—rested and ready to act.

  So … what now?

  How was she going to cultivate the necessary state of mind and deliberately sustain and control it for long periods of time?

  Mind altering drugs would certainly bring this sort of consciousness to the forefront with a fury—probably too much of a fury, and fleetingly as well. She didn’t want to find herself too disoriented to grasp what was going on. Marianne knew she’d better keep her wits about her, no matter how right-brained she intended to get. Besides, she no longer had any idea where to get such drugs.

  Guess I’ll have to alter my consciousness the old-fashioned way.

  Marianne had practiced a number of techniques at one time or another during her bohemian days—meditation, self-induced sleeplessness, and fasting. Now she would have to muster them all in a kind of crash-course of mind alteration.