by Jay Smith
After some pleasantries and awkward commitments to follow up, we said goodbye. On my way to the door, she took me by the wrist and gently turned me around, well inside my personal space.
She asked, "What happened to the children, Mr. Casey? I know it's in here, but…"
I stepped backward and slipped free of her fingers. "I'm looking for them. When you're done reading maybe you'll want to help me look."
When the door to the lobby opened, I assumed it was a sign my time was up. I'm not sure who was more surprised to see the other: Dennis Reilly or me.
Reilly looked irritated, like someone pulled him away from a bum fight. He barely looked at Vivian as he entered the office. "Vivian! I heard you had a visitor from Aeternus."
I smiled at Reilly. "Hey there! I'm just here to share my condolences and thanks."
He looked doubtful. "For what, Casey?"
Vivian stood up from her seat, palming the USB as she buttoned her suit coat. "You know one another?"
Reilly clucked his tongue. "Well, I know Winston Casey. I don't know Jess Fletcher."
"You don't know how to knock, either, Denny." Vivian poked him. "Is there something more urgent you need that would explain that?"
"Well, no."
"I see. Jess Fletcher was a no-show, Denny. Mr. Casey was visiting an old nurse of his here at the pediatric ward and paid me a social call. I had a free 30 minutes and we talked about some mutual friends. Grant Parker, of instance."
I stood up, emboldened by Vivian Kline embracing the lie. "But it's always good to see you, 'Denny'."
A full minute of awkward small-talk ensued including an insincere invitation to an event at the Safe House and how I like being a millionaire at the heart of Aeternus. Vivian reacted with surprise at this, but I shrugged it off, saying I looked forward to helping him and Vivian clear King Kline's good name.
Denny could do nothing but agree heartily.
Chapter Thirty-Three
A Billion Miles Across a Million Servers
Mistress Huan hit her assistant so hard that a fine mist of blood sprayed from the slices her nails cut across his face. It left a hideous pattern on the mahogany wall and terrified the junior analyst waiting to deliver his report.
The analyst's Magic Book which displayed the morning financial reports dropped from his hands and bounced off the shag rug. The door to Huan's office was open so her blood-freezing shriek carried across the entire operations floor, to every cube, and through every partitioned office.
"Should I come back," the analyst mumbled just before Huan lunged for his neck.
~
Of course, most of the accountants and planners knew about the major withdrawals that took place the night before and all of them had been hiding or laying low in dread until Huan arrived much earlier than her usual 10am start.
The Capital Grid remained offline. To the players of Aeternus, the official explanation was a server farm fire in central Russia and satellite issues preventing the back-up facilities from coming online. Of course, there were rumors of a massive denial of service attack by the Chinese or North Koreans, maybe anonymous hackers looking to plunder the Capital Treasury. The usual disinformation chafe thrown up by the Internet helped keep the truth hidden for a while for the few people unfortunate enough to know it.
Inside the company, the IT and Security staff already knew the truth. At five o'clock local time, midnight GMT, thousands of small financial withdrawals triggered automatically from inactive accounts set up by Grant Parker. They were all programmed to cash out as soon as his Inventory assets were transferred from Parker's main account to one in Ebetha along with the $17 million and assets agreed to by Alan Horus.
These game accounts, set up years in advance, were automated to hide among the lower-traffic players who spent little time online, but spent a few dollars here and charged up their accounts through mining for ore and other resources. Parker had set them up with his secret partner in the IT section with an agreement to split the balance when it all went down. Unfortunately, both men associated with setting up the scheme were dead and the account numbers unknown – except to one man sitting in a Las Vegas airport waiting on a flight to Ebetha.
The damage amounted to roughly $73.5 million in all. It represented a week of operating capital for the Aeternus Vegas Resort and the Peppermint Casino: all of it vanishing on a day when most of the debits – contract payments, interest installments, were due to be paid electronically.
The Aeternus online treasury did not have the fail-safes used by the New York Stock Exchange to prevent a crash based on a sudden run on the market. The bank did not close but honored all credits and debits automatically. At The computers running the game clocked over to a new day approximately $67 million in the red, crashing transactions and the servers supporting them.
~
Aeternus went dark.
A hundred thousand subjects found themselves back in reality without a link to their surrogate world. Many of them went on with their lives content to login later. Others exercised their mouse clicking for hours waiting for the load bar to move beyond the initial handshake step. Aeternus, under attack, was not even accessible to its supreme leader.
~
By the time Ni Huan reached Alan Horus' office suite, Alan was aware of it, too, and had been since four in the morning. He was made aware because his payments to International Communications Company, the shell company for the Russians, were automatically halted by the bank. The Russians, of course, were not pleased. Alan was already on the phone with an irate, old Ukrainian man who insisted on an immediate and private meeting to discuss the issue. Silently, Alan wrote a short note and handed it off to his trembling assistant, pointing to the name Ni Huan at the top.
~
"What fucking message, you weeping cuntlet? I will see Alan NOW!"
The young assistant opened the note which was written in Alan's handwriting.
"Run. Run before you FLY," it read.
~
As Alan waited for an old Russian businessman to finish talking with his associates on the other end of the phone, he considered how this outage would attract the attention of the federal regulators and how many opportunistic lawsuits would result from the thousands of pathetic players forced to confront reality for the duration. Alan tried to work out how it all happened or at least come up with a convincing theory that left him blameless. Unfortunately, the most important issue was that the Russians did not get paid. And he had no idea when he would recoup $73 million, pay them AND get his empire back online.
To the empty air, Alan growled. "We had a deal, Casey. We had a fucking deal."
It was not a pretty conversation. It was so bad that Kiev pulled Dimitri and his boys back to give the "big bears" room to work out the details in private. To Alan, it was like the sea pulling back from shore just before the tsunami rushed over the countryside.
Years. It had been years since the Russians dared speak to him that way. Ursus Tomalavich threatening to "slit open" his business over a bounced payment of a million dollars took Alan back to a time when he wasn't in complete control.
This only made him more dangerous.
But it also made Alan think carefully. He knew the Why and How of it. He also knew the How Much longer before his useless minion Ni Huan was even awake.
"Mr. Horus," Tomalavich growled, "You are not being a good friend. A good friend pays his debts. You would never choose to let the dogs at your estate starve. You feed them because they protect you. You never thank them. They never thank you. They are silent, understanding the relationship they have with one another. Is this not true?"
"Ursus," Alan began… "Relax. This is a technical glitch. Let me…"
"No. We know what has happened. You are weak. It is not that you have our secrets. But that you did not keep them."
"Ursus, listen to me. I will make this right by the end of the day. Heads will roll and blood with spill…"
Ursus laughed like a drunk watch
ing a dancing monkey. "What do you know of blood? You pay us to avoid seeing it, to avoid spilling it. But you not pay us today and we think the future will have more of this 'make it right' begging from you."
"God-damn it, Ursus! You've gotten fat on my efforts. Settle yourself and you'll get back on the teat…"
"Tell, me, Alan. When was the last time you took a ride on your own sunrise flight? Eh?"
Silence on both ends. Alan's rage had no outlet and any word he spoke could end the possibility of a way out.
"Sundown," Ursus said. "Pay us. And then we will discuss the terms for continuing our relationship."
The line went dead.
The phone smashed against the office window, creating a spider web across the Vegas skyline.
~
It wasn't a crushing blow, but one Alan had to fix quickly. He pushed aside his anger and lust for blood, pushed the image of Winston Casey from his mind, rejected thoughts of betrayal by his closest advisor Grant Parker, and focused on how to fix the immediate problem.
Aeternus had accounts all over the world, unconnected to the company or its subsidiaries. His credit might have helped close the gap, but it would have crippled him in the long term. The competition would see his desperate request as a sign of weakness and pounce on the hotel and casino. No, he decided. He had to take from the private accounts to cover his immediate needs and the losses from shutting down.
Alan Horus opened his private laptop and accessed the accounts for several projects underway for Aeternus' satellite projects. He scrolled through to the "Aeternus Preservation" account – the largest of his secret caches fueled by the drug and human traffic trade run by his Dirty Kids and their Fagans.
$47,233,154.23 account balance.
It should have been triple that but the second phase development of Island Aeternus was underway; the phase that would bring his new fantasy world into reality, populated by his minions and supporters. The remaining amount was to cover overages and collect interest for Phase Three – a relocation effort for his loyal subjects and the birth of his dream of AETERNUS as a new nation to the world.
Alan Horus cursed Winston Casey and promised to burn him alive in his new capital – not the online one but the real capital under construction at his undisclosed location: the future of the world. Nothing would stop Lord Bunting-upon-Stropf from assuming his throne in the real world nation of Aeternus.
And no one would stop him. On that day, Alan Horus promised himself, Winston Casey's ashes would fertilize the flower beds of his new royal palace.
The End.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Master fantasist Harlan Ellison once proclaimed, "From what I've read of Jay Smith, he is either a great scam-man liar or a born writer." Jay holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. An award-winning author, audio dramatist, and podcaster, Jay is responsible for the acclaimed audio horror series HG World and the pulp radio serial Hidden Harbor Mysteries. Jay's other works include the short story collection Seven til Sunrise, Rise of the Monkey Lord, Aggressive Vignettes, and Anatomy of an Audio Drama. Jay lives in Central Pennsylvania with his wife, children and two neurotic cats.