Anno Dracula 1999

by Kim Newman

  Hal bet Hellish was Jun Zero’s arch-nemesis.

  God, the damage she could do with teeth and claws and her cunning little parasite mind!

  The Broadway musical Miss Christina! was about Christina Light. Hal saw the film version. Madonna spent most scenes when she wasn’t singing out of tune lying about in corsets being nuzzled on by an elder vampire played by Sean Penn. It was no Desperately Schtupping Susan that was for sure.

  ‘This is all original,’ he said. ‘The furniture, the walls, the mess?’

  ‘Eighty-nine percent original,’ confirmed Lefty.

  Hal guessed anyone with the money and determination to carve out a fiefdom from someone else’s country and build a headquarters shaped like a G-bot dinosaur could buy up their past and arrange this winding path so she could traipse down memory lane when the mood took her.

  Was that her coming for him? With the white hair?

  Madonna played Christina Light as blonde. But, if there was a musical biopic to be made, Madonna would play Harriet Tubman as blonde.

  This wasn’t a museum, but a private space. A mnemonic garden. What happened to the houses the rooms were stripped out of? Did they fall down without them? The ship must have sunk.

  And why do it?

  After a hundred or more years, memories blurred. Could physical objects bring them back in focus? If Jun Zero put together a similar exhibition of rooms, from Hal’s teenage Ojai bedroom to whatever high-tech lair the outlaw hung his sharp brim in these days, would his chiropterid-wiped past come back?

  Hal peeped that this Christina woman was weird. Weirder than Madonna. Weirder even than Crispin Glover. It could be she had the time tunnel notion after bingeing on golden blood, gave a million dollars to a firm of fix-its, and forgot the whim until they’d installed this ghost train in her building.

  The Japanese temple was a dead-end.

  Wherever came next, Miss Christina must still be living in it.

  This building, presumably. It wasn’t just a corporate HQ.

  Hal looked back down the passageway of a life.

  Most of the rooms had pictures on display. The portrait with the sketchy face but filled-in background. Photographs in frames, cards pinned to walls, pages frail as fall leaves torn from magazines. Christina Light left her image behind like shed snakeskins.

  In which room had she been bitten by that crusty horror Sean Penn played?

  Probably one that came after the boudoir with the mirror. She wouldn’t need the vanity glass as a vampire.

  He’d think this was supposed to be a tomb – like the luxury dens pharaohs set up inside pyramids – only he got the idea Miss Christina planned on not dying.

  No one did these days.

  Whatever was following him would catch up now.

  The lights went on in a far room as the ghost slipped through the doorway.

  Hal looked about for a weapon. He could get to the dropped revolver…

  Whatever was creeping towards him wouldn’t be stopped by lead.

  Could Tsunako Shiki have found him?

  He had the impression of someone slight, slender.

  A girl. Older than Tsunako, or at least taller.

  He knew where she was because lights came on in those rooms, but she always found cover so he couldn’t see her properly. She was quick, then. And thinking tactically.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, at last giving in to the impulse.

  He held up Lefty, like a heroine’s candlestick, ready for use as a bludgeon.

  At least he could trust his glitching hand to deliver a hefty whack.

  The girl stepped into the suicide’s studio. Artificial Italian sunlight filtered in through fake windows. She stood by the easel.

  ‘Such a sad story,’ she said. ‘Charles Strickland, the painter. He shot himself on the Princess’s wedding day.’

  The girl was nothing like Madonna. So not Christina Light then.

  For a terrible second, Hal thought she was Cousin Hellish.

  She was a vampire and Japanese. She had long white hair and spoke English with a British accent. She wore knee-socks, a blazer with a pocket badge, and a pleated skirt, as if she went to Catholic school or were a steward at a tech trade fair. Her uniform was slightly grubby with a few rips.

  She carried a sword as if she knew how to use it.

  ‘I’m Nezumi,’ she said, smiling openly. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Hal, ah…’ he began, then caught himself squeaking. He took a breath and spoke from his chest in more manly fashion, ‘Jun Zero.’

  Moving faster than his eye could register, Nezumi crossed the distance between them – five or six rooms – and laid an icy sword edge against his neck.

  Her face was close to his. She looked about thirteen.

  ‘Jun Zero,’ she said, not smiling.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, nearly squeaking again, ‘you’ve heard of me.’

  He shouldn’t need reminding that he was on everyone’s kill-on-sight list.

  She left her sword where it was but stood back – giving herself room to swing for a proper killing slice.

  ‘Funny story,’ he said, ‘but, ah, an hour and a half ago I hadn’t heard of me. My mind got wiped. I’m Jun Zero, yes… but I can’t remember being Jun Zero. In my head, I’m this kid called Harold Takahama. I make – ah, he made robots for computer games. Perhaps you could call me Hal? And not kill me.’

  The sword didn’t move.

  DETECTIVE AZUMA

  At this phase of the lunar cycle, Chief Inugami sported a faceload of greying bristles but his nose was only slightly snout-like. His lower fangs gnawed his upper lip. His yellow eyes burned like angry full moons.

  Azuma gave his report.

  The Wolfman assembled all available officers in the interrogation room – which also served as squad room, briefing room, downtime room and storage closet. Police boxes were notoriously cramped. Sarge, Brenten, Nakajima and Ota sat on folding chairs in stages of inebriation, puzzlement, exhilaration and terror. Azuma would prefer frightened, cautious Nakajima at his back over fired-up, gun-happy Ota. He’d rather go alone than rely on either, but after what he’d seen he didn’t have a choice. This had to be dumped in Inugami’s lap.

  Asato Yamamura, a girlish boy-stroke-boyish girl, was pulled off the switchboard to sit at the front desk. Of the iso onna bloodline, she was permanently damp and sucked salt through hollow needles inside her mouth. Asato adopted that faddish yūrei look – long lank hair combed over the face like a mask. Still, a more impressive representative of the Bund PD than Sergeant Kankichi.

  The puma girls were out on their tails. With reports of a mounting death toll, they became less keen on being given guns. Brenten and Nakajima did up their shirts and took off the party headbands.

  Mitsuru Fujiwara, an employee of Light Industries who looked after the police computers, had come by with holiday treats for Asato and the Sakis. Guimauve – marshmallow shells with a dollop of virgin choirboy blood in the centre. Sarge said the smoothie was doing the rounds of his harem. He was still piqued about the mice.

  Inugami deputised Fujiwara.

  Azuma noticed the tall, coiffured vampire was comfortable with the pistol Ota gave him. He didn’t wave it like an idiot playing cowboys or shrink away from the weapon as if it were a rusty grenade.

  The Chief hadn’t been alerted to the EarthGuard presence. That should have been standard procedure. Asato mentioned only receiving calls from inside the Bund in the last hour or so. And few of them, considering the busy evening. No outside lines were available.

  Everyone with a cell phone wasted a minute or so establishing that they couldn’t get a signal. That must involve sophisticated jamming equipment. Fujiwara’s phone was smaller and more powerful than everyone else’s. He tried the emergency failsafe channel and got a recording.

  ‘It’s New Year’s Eve,’ he said. ‘People with out-of-date ideas will think the system is overloaded by everyone calling relatives. That can’t happen any more. This
is a bad thing. A deliberate thing.’

  Sarge suggested looking at TV news.

  They all left the interrogation room and found Asato holding Sarge’s pinky video by thumb and forefinger. Behind that curtain of hair, she made an ick face. The telephonist wore a long white shroud-shift, which her hair seemed to be woven into. A big badge with a cartoon policeman on it showed she could be asked for help.

  Sarge clicked through channels.

  Every network had a live New Year’s Eve programme. It was already 2000 in New Zealand and their computers still worked. An American Queen of Cyberpunk said no one should let unfounded rumourmongering get in the way of having a fabulous party night. An animated clip depicted the dreaded millennium bug as a data-eating cockroach. The Cham-Cham ‘1999’ clip played on several channels, with news headlines along the bottom of the screen. Lots of trivial celebration stories. No word of a terrorist incident in Tokyo. No camera crews at the Gate of the Bund. No experts reassuring or politicians sweating.

  The big news was Cham-Cham themselves, who were due to perform their follow-up song live on Kōhaku Uta Gassen. Asato – monotone somehow enthusiastic – predicted they’d ditch the burikko style, stop acting like teenagers imitating twelve-year-olds, and ‘go sexy’ for the new century. She also said it wouldn’t work and their fans would find new idoru. Nakajima agreed but was still interested in what their next single would be. It didn’t surprise Azuma that these police were easily distracted. They hadn’t seen the Sakis splattered with murder mushrooms.

  Fujiwara commandeered the kōban’s computer terminal. He typed commands and accessed sites. He knew what he was doing but didn’t try to explain. He was impatient with people who weren’t tech-literate to his level.

  While Fujiwara dicked about on the web, everyone else watched television.

  Tokyo MX cut between reports of celebrations from all around the city.

  A suicide cult was gathered for a tantalising evening on the slopes of Mount Fuji. An eruption was foretold by a prophet who found hidden wisdom in the theme song of a popular children’s cartoon. The faithful anticipated ecstatic transformation and holy death. As lava-mummies, they would be twisted in poses of eternal adoration. Those who hadn’t bothered – or dared – to quit their jobs would get ribbed to death when they had to show their faces at work next week.

  Then the station cut to Daikaiju Plaza.

  ‘Look, it’s us,’ said Nakajima.

  Sophie Fukami, a warm announcer, stood with a microphone, pretending to be afraid of larking vampires. She gave the word from the Bund.

  ‘Saki-G,’ shouted Ota.

  Behind Sophie, the girl cop did yo-yo tricks for a crowd.

  ‘You said she was dead,’ accused Nakajima.

  Inugami growled and pointed at the screen.

  In the crowd next to Saki-G was Nakajima, face painted green.

  ‘That’s last year,’ said Brenten.

  Sophie smiled nervously and waved, chatting with an anchor in the studio. TMX cut to a rockabilly-permed warm guy and a Regency-frilled vampire girl duetting outside a Nigerian bar in Roppongi. ‘Find Life Again,’ they sang.

  ‘That’s now,’ said Asato, with a halting croak. ‘The song’s only a month old. Dessert were on top of the charts with it until Cham-Cham knocked them off.’

  ‘Good detective work,’ said Inugami.

  It didn’t surprise Azuma that the best police in this box was the secretary.

  Asato fiddled proudly with her wet hair.

  Sulkily, Sarge snaffled a guimauve from the gift basket.

  ‘How is this possible?’ Brenten asked, peering at the screen.

  ‘It’s doable if you have the resources,’ said Fujiwara, not looking away from the terminal screen. ‘Cut the live feed, replace it with the recording. Rely on everyone either end being tipsy and careless.’

  ‘Don’t you broadcast that Light Channel thing from the Big Dragon?’ asked Azuma.

  ‘That’s not transmitted as such. A signal generates light from receivers. You’re right, though. It must be coming from the crown of masts on top of Daikaiju Building. Someone’s been in the Processor Room and done something clever and dangerous.’

  Fujiwara turned in his chair.

  ‘The World Wide Web isn’t cut off, but bandwidth is throttled,’ he said. ‘Sites load too slowly to be accessed. E-mail is down so no getting messages out that way.’

  ‘Millennium bug?’ said Nakajima.

  Fujiwara pouted. ‘We’ve spent six years proofing systems against that. And it’s not midnight. But most people will think what you think. The millennium bug has been all over the news. That TV graphic is typical. Mlecchas think an actual insect eats the insides of your computer.’

  Azuma had heard the word mleccha before. From Aum Draht perps.

  They were all cyber-dweebs too.

  ‘I’ve accessed the feed TMX is using,’ said Fujiwara. ‘This is where it gets interesting and a teeny bit arousing. It’s not straight footage from last year’s festival.’

  Sophie Fukami was back on television, with the Sakis waving at the camera. Their cheeriness had a chilling effect on the room. The reporter relayed questions from the anchor to the yo-yo girls.

  ‘It’s been doctored with next-gen interactive AI functionality,’ said Fujiwara, proudly.

  ‘Talk Japanese,’ snapped Inugami.

  ‘The people in the studio are having a verbal interaction – a conversation – with the reporter. She answers questions. She makes jokes. It doesn’t make perfect sense, but – again, thank you, drunken New Year’s celebrations – neither does anything else. CG-Sophie passes a Turing test. That’s genuinely exciting. The audio is generated by smartware, along with video glitches that make lip movements match. You know in games you have rudimentary conversations with NPCs – ah, with characters who are part of the scenario, but not gamer avatars – and get responses. The programmer codes answers that vary depending on prompts. That’s not a simple rerun of an old Sophie Fukami tape… that’s a responsive construct, generating information on the fly, fooling a user into believing they’re talking to another human. Even if she doesn’t hold up for long, she’s an incredible achievement.’

  ‘Pardon me if I don’t applaud,’ said Inugami.

  Azuma looked at the woman on the screen. She seemed no less real or unreal than the people in the room.

  Thinking like this turned people to Aum Draht.

  NEZUMI

  So this was the famous Jun Zero!

  Trying to tell her a likely story.

  She knew the name from watch-lists, but the Diogenes Club file wasn’t even sure the outlaw hacker was just one person. Jun Zero might well be a loose collective. Profilers struggled to formulate a coherent psych evaluation for a malefactor whose crimes ranged from murder to trivial tomfoolery. Did Jun Zero suffer from multiple personality disorder or was he tricky enough to fake the condition? Amoral or puritanical? Anarchist or fascist? Evil or idealist? Warm or vampire – or something else? A rogue AI, perhaps? Or six unemployed screenwriters with a World Wide Web connection whose bitch session jape got out of hand.

  Jun Zero was credibly connected with a rash of church fires from Buenos Aires to County Mayo. Jun Zero electronically raided the accounts of Children in Need, distributing the entire sum raised in 1996 to every billionaire in the world. Small random sums forensic accountants wouldn’t notice were paid into vast slush funds. Barely a tenth of the money was returned. Jun Zero sank ships, stole on a scale that made Anthony Peak look like a Piccadilly pickpocket, supplied rival street gangs with prototype plasma weapons and set off the Bronx Warriors/Baseball Furies War of 1996, and sent customers who ordered mysteries from an online bookseller e-mails which gave away the culprit in the header.

  Nezumi looked up at the man with the glass hand.

  A trickle of sweat ran across his bar-code tattoo and onto her blade.

  She’d expected a cooler customer. And maybe someone taller. She didn’t have to loo
k up at him much.

  Could this specimen be the figurehead of the Zeroid Movement?

  Massed ranks of Jun Zeros turned up in black cloaks, cordovan hats and Z-marked Zorro masks to disrupt events they deemed symptoms of a sick society: Crufts Dog Show; the Femina Miss India contest; the Bleeding Man Festival in the Mojave Desert; the gala opening of de Boscherville’s Anck-es-en-Amon at the Paris Opera, sponsored by Petrox Oil to greenwash their image after the North Sea Jennifer disaster.

  Zeroid mobs shuffled around menacingly and threw stink bombs until authorities got used to writing them off as a mere nuisance. Then they pulled scimitars out of their robes at the World Cup in France in 1998 and killed fifty-seven football fans before the CRS went in with guns. Men and women under the masks turned out to be achingly ordinary – warm and vampire – and from different countries and backgrounds. Asked why they did what they did, they said, ‘To set the counter to zero’, which ranked with ‘The Wire is watching’ as an ominous meaningless platitude.

  Just because this guy said he was Jun Zero didn’t mean he was.

  Thinking about it, why would Jun Zero flat out admit who he was? Shouldn’t he have a fully-worked-out bogus identity ready to hide behind? He’d always have an alibi, like the cat in the poem, and one or two to spare.

  It made sense – for the moment – to think of the middle-sized, bleached blond guy as Hal.

  He looked like the kind of fellow she didn’t much cotton to. Overly full of himself, with a daft bar-code throat tattoo like a transfer packaged with issue one of a boys’ comic. Rule one of covert work – don’t have identifying marks. Jun Zero ought to be someone you couldn’t describe after he’d got away.

  She got a different reading off Hal when he spoke. He was afraid of her – she did have a sword to his neck – but not bitter or resentful about it the way some boys were when shown up in even the smallest things.