“Ah yes, I upgraded from a 486 to a Pentium Pro too. And I splashed out an extra two hundred pounds on 16 meg of RAM instead of eight! The salesman on the phone told me I had made a very wise choice and it would serve me well for a long time in the future!” Amit laughs.
If the kitchen smart meters measured geek levels, there’d be warning lights and sirens by now, Nick thinks. The rock in his chest shrinks to a pebble as he finds himself talking about his love affair with PC games. His happiest memories of the late Nineties and early Noughties are of hammering away at first-person shooters, running through endless corridors and gunning away at monsters, demons and enemy soldiers. It was an obsession that lasted right through his student days in Manchester, eating into both studying and socialising time. Nick talks about computer games like Quake II, Call of Duty and Halo the way Harry talks about gay nightspots like Cruz 101, Via Fossa and Babylon. Both of them were having exciting adventures at the same time, in different worlds.
“I usually called myself Killswitch,” Nick says, smiling with his entire face. “Used to stay up till dawn deathmatching with other kids around the world... you remember deathmatching? When you’d all be playing the same game? And you could either group into teams or take each other on, and you’d constantly be typing messages at each other in the game, especially when you fragged someone or beat their score. It felt so amazing back then to know your mates were in Tokyo and New York or wherever, but you were all still part of the same gang, this mad little family of online warriors...”
Nick trails off, noticing how Amit is staring into the middle distance. He adjusts his glasses, the ones with Spex™ technology built in, providing a constant online feed. “Just had a couple of friend requests,” Amit says, “better go say hello.”
He walks out into the crowded garden, leaving Nick standing by himself in the kitchen. Feeling like a trapdoor has just swung open beneath him.
He does what he always does, and lets it go.
And then he thinks of Beauty.
Again, guilt like heartburn. Shakes his head as if to fling the images away. Too much going on to start confusing himself with those memories. He’s the one being lied to here.
As he wanders back towards the living room, there’s a welcoming chorus of female voices. Not for him, but for the song that has just started playing: Flag’s comeback single, ‘I Still Love You’. He stands back and watches over a dozen middle-aged women croon along to the ballad, gabbling about how much they still adore the boys from Flag, isn’t Declan even sexier now with that beard, do you remember his whole ‘Mister Ex’ scandal what was that all about, I’ve got tickets for their Stratford Stadium gig, five hundred quid each but soooo worth it, weren’t they amazing at the Platinum Jubilee concert, such a shame the Queen couldn’t make it but didn’t her auto look lovely projected up on Buckingham Palace, all smiling and clapping and giving cheeky little winks to the boys...
Nick jumps when Larissa bursts into the living room. She rushes up to one of the plump women in their forties talking about Flag, embraces her happily. He actually finds himself retreating, stepping back into the hallway, but never taking his eyes from her. The chest-pebble hardens into a boulder.
“La, I can’t believe you haven’t read ‘Second Smile’ yet!” the woman is saying. “You have to sync it from me, I can’t believe you don’t have it!”
“Wait wait wait, don’ you move!” Larissa cries, rushing out and back again with her KindleBlaze in hand. Nick realises this must be Eleanor, one of his wife’s inner Circle. The two of them have been co-running a book club for the past few years, arranging both online and realtime meets with dozens of fiction readers. Every Sunday and every other Tuesday Larissa disappears for the whole evening, meeting up with club members to discuss the latest bestseller.
Larissa has always loved reading. When she arrived from Trinidad ten years ago, Nick struggled to lug her massive suitcases through Heathrow Airport, realising later that she’d brought twice as many books as clothes. Their old house had been filled with hardbacks and paperbacks, gathering dust on shelves or piled into towers. Hundreds of them! All gone now, of course, just like his DVDs and Blu-rays. Dead media.
He watches Larissa and Eleanor sync their KindleBlazes. They’ve got the same model that’s made from memory plastic, folded in the middle to form a spine, so it’s effectively a two-page book on which you can flick digital pages back and forth. The outer skin of Eleanor’s KindleBlaze is displaying an animated video trailer of ‘Second Smile’, announcing to the world what she’s reading. Eleanor makes a plucking gesture with her fingers, taking an eeBook from her KindleBlaze and dropping it onto Larissa’s with a flourish. Their autos, detecting this motion, will do the actual work of copying the files from one account to another.
Before long, other guests drift over, some with their own eeBook readers or smartphones in hand. People who have never said a word to Larissa or Eleanor greet them as if they’ve been personally invited. Which in a way they have – their autos have alerted them to the discussion taking place and flagged up the shared interest. There’s a lot of this going on: people’s autos letting them know about a conversation they might be interested in joining. Nick notices that on the other side of the room, a few guests are choosing sides in Leo and Drake’s argument about music, joining in at their autos’ suggestion. It’s a great help when you have a party made up of people from different Circles and walks of life. How else is everyone supposed to break the ice?
Larissa is chatting and laughing with Eleanor and the other fiction-lovers, as they swap eeBooks and compare the merits of different reading devices. Her smile is as bright as her multicoloured dress. Nick hasn’t seen that smile since... he can’t remember the last time.
And he finds himself thinking: Is it talking about books that’s making her so happy? Or is there another reason?
[Name withheld] is in a
relationship with Larissa Brady
I don’t know who she meets when she goes to these book clubs... I don’t know if that’s where she’s really going... I don’t know anything about my own bloody wife!
“Okay,” he says aloud. Can’t do this any more. Have to talk to someone. Have to do something.
He finds Harry out on the patio, by the cooling barbeque. Despite it being properly dark now, there’s still a few dozen people enjoying the warm night air. Nick doesn’t know the young-ish guy that Harry’s talking to, but he recognises the way he’s permanently smiling and meeting the man’s eyes. Target acquired.
“Need to talk,” mutters Nick.
There must be a catch in his voice, or another easily-decodable look on his face, because Harry stops flirting immediately. He tells the young-ish guy he’ll catch up with him later, then follows Nick as he strides off the patio and onto grass, heading down to the far end of the garden. Shadows envelop them, making the lights and noise from the patio feel more distant than they actually are.
Harry says “Brady, you taking me down to the bushes, in the dark... people will talk!”
Nick says “Larissa’s having an affair.”
Harry says “Don’t tell me you’ve – what?”
Nick says “Larissa is cheating on me with another man.”
Harry says “Mate. Hang on. You sure?”
Nick says “I got a friend request from his auto.”
Harry says “Shit the bed.”
Like a dam has collapsed inside him, the words come fountaining out of Nick, telling the entire story. It’s probably the longest time that Harry’s been silent, as he stands and listens, brown eyes wide.
“Oh mio Dio,” mutters Harry when Nick’s finished. “I mean – bloody hell. So you have no idea who this bloke might be?”
“Not a clue.”
“But... how come he managed to keep his name hidden? I didn’t think that was possible now?”
“It’s illegal, but not impossible. You can’t do it using your normal privacy settings, you need some special apps.”
“Dodgy apps, you mean?”
“Yeah. Like ten years in prison dodgy. There’s a sort of black market for illegal programs, coming out of those countries that haven’t signed up to the Internet Regs. Apps that allow you to do things like alter your own timeline. Or associate you with certain hashtags to make you more popular.”
Nick goes on, allowing himself to say what’s been hovering at the edge of his mind ever since he saw [Name withheld]. “And... there’s something called a K8 app. Which allows you to go the whole way and create a totally false profile. Like in the old days, when you never knew who you were talking to on the internet? Except this is a fully functional auto, connected to everything like it’s a real person. But it’s completely fake.”
“So if this guy’s using one of those,” says Harry, “that means he could be anybody. He could be someone you already know. Jesus, he could be here, right now, in your house!”
“Are you enjoying this?”
“What? Sod off, of course not! This is serious, mate, I get it.”
But Nick can see how much Harry’s face has lit up. There’s excitement dancing in his eyes. It might be that part of him that loves drama, chases adrenalin highs. Or it might be that his old friend is on the verge of losing a wife Harry has never exactly been fond of.
“Is there any other, like, evidence?” Harry asks. “You haven’t, I dunno, found anything in the house that’s not yours, or caught her doing something on the sly...?”
Nick shakes his head. “Nothing like that, no. But things have been a bit weird lately. Can’t really put my finger on it, but there’s definitely something on her mind. I thought it was just moving house, but it seems more serious than that.”
“Women, right? You have to be bleedin’ telepathic if you ever want to understand them. You should go gay like I’ve been saying mate, much less hard work! Lot of boys would love a big fella like you.”
“I need to prove this,” Nick insists, “I need to know one way or the other, it’s driving me insane!”
Harry shrugs. “You could just ask her?”
Imagine it: looking Larissa in the eyes and accusing her of having an affair. Nick’s guts coil into knots. “No. I have to be sure before I do that. I need the facts.”
Harry runs both hands through his shaggy black hair, looking back towards the house. “I don’t suppose... look mate, maybe you’re jumping the gun a bit and it’s not that serious. She could just be having some fun on the sexnets? Bit of simming, when you’re not around?”
Nick chews the inside of his jaw and wonders if that’s all it is. Running a simulated relationship is common practice when you meet someone new. A high see-eye is useful to check how compatible you might be, but it’s letting your autos interact that really confirms if they’re worth befriending. Saves a lot of grief later down the line if your auto reports that you and the other person tend to argue, or disagree on politics, or hate each other’s music.
And if there’s potential for intimacy? Then you take the simming onto the sexnets. Alongside all the apps like Poundr and Hugr which let you locate someone nearby for whatever you’re in the mood for, the sexnets also have simulated playrooms, similar to the now-illegal Second Life. Users build realistic avatars from their own images and stats, feed in their tastes and activities, put them in a playroom with other avatars and see what happens. Then you have proper hard data on how a relationship might go. You can get an idea how good someone is in bed before you even know what they look like.
Harry adds “I’ve got nine or ten sexnet sims on the go, it’s not that unusual. Maybe she’s just been doing that, and the other bloke got a bit carried away?”
Nick’s eyebrows jump. “Nine or ten? Does Gareth know?”
“Christ, no!” Harry laughs. “He’s a bit moralistic about that sort of thing... you know how ‘black and white’ younger guys are. Nah, I’d never actually cheat on him for real, but simming doesn’t count, does it? And I get to act like I’m still single. Got to get your fun from somewhere!”
Nick suddenly finds Beauty popping into his head. Got to get your fun from somewhere.
But he wrenches himself away, pushing the guilt back down. “No, it’s not that,” he tells Harry. “Sexnet sims are run by your auto, your identity isn’t hidden, that’s why they’re still legal. This guy managed to hide his entire profile. But his auto must have seen that he knew both me and Larissa, and that accidentally triggered the friend request.”
“Huh. Bit of a cock-up on his part. All right, so if Larissa’s got something going on with another guy, it’ll all be in her timeline, won’t it? Can’t you get hold of her phone, take a peek?”
“No chance. She’s got the same model as me, Nebulas have biometric security, all touch-sensitive. It won’t even turn on unless she’s the one holding it.”
Harry punches him in the chest. “Well I dunno, mate, you’re the computer whizz-kid who knows about all that geekery, can’t you hack into her profile or something?”
Nick opens his mouth to explain why autos cannot be hacked, and stalls as the answer literally punches him in the chest.
“Harry, you’re a total genius!” he hisses, punching him back.
“Yeah!” Harry grins. “Er, what for?”
“I can’t use Larissa’s auto, there’s way too many security checks, but if her auto was being hosted on a server that I had admin rights to...” He flings out his hands as if to say ta-daa!
Harry looks pleased, ta-daas him back, then says “What?”
“Then I can access its code! I can look at her auto via the server architecture.”
“Got it – peeking under the bonnet, yeah? Mate, I am a total genius and you are lucky to know me!”
Nick shoves him towards the patio. “Right, bugger off, I’ve got work to do.”
“Yes sir, Admiral Spod, sir.” With a salute and a parting kick to Nick’s backside, Harry ambles back up the garden towards the house, checking his wrist to see what he’s missed.
Nick’s also on his phone, flipping it out to tablet mode and calling up some of the online tools he uses at work. If you know what you’re doing, it doesn’t take long to find the IP address of anything that lives online. Before long he’s worked out that Larissa’s auto is being run on a Microsoft server in San Diego. He smiles a little at the coincidence in the name... her home town being Diego Martin.
Memories. How stunning she looked walking through the town, walking past where he sat, with her friends and boyfriend, not even registering him, as if he was invisible. Just like she does now. Nick’s throat tightens. Maybe his life is slipping into reverse, and he’ll soon find himself back on that barstool in the corner, ignored by the beautiful people, untouched by the nightlife. Alone.
He glances up at the three-storey house and imagines living there by himself, treading from empty room to empty room.
Stop it. You’ve got a job to do. Wipe your eyes, you need to be able to see your phone.
Using his professional account, Nick submits an official request to migrate Larissa Brady’s auto to his data centre in Enfield. It’s not such a big deal, since TransDigital is an authorised UK host for Microsoft, and their servers are indistinguishable from those in San Diego. As long as it’s on Microsoft’s network, it doesn’t really matter where any auto lives. And since the owner is a British citizen, it’s a legitimate request to use local hosting in the same country.
As he opens a port on the new BBX4001 server, Nick thinks of all the on-site engineers still working at the facility, constantly monitoring the servers. They’ll have no idea what he’s doing, right under their noses. The BBX server is on the network, but only he has access to it, nobody else knows it even exists. It’s his personal project, and right now Amit only trusts him with it, since it could mean radical changes for TransDigital in the future. So there’ll be no witnesses.
It takes ages. Minutes. Lots of pacing up and down in the dark at the bottom of the garden and ignoring the sounds of partying f
rom the house. But eventually Nick receives confirmation that the auto has been migrated from San Diego to Enfield. Larissa will have no idea that the digital version of her has just travelled halfway around the world – her auto continues running without pause.
Nick opens the BBX server folder structure. Larissa’s auto is now sitting there, next to his. Just the two of them.
A couple.
Nick hesitates. Prickly heat creeps up his neck. What he’s doing suddenly feels like opening someone’s private diary. No, much worse. Like looking inside someone’s head. And although he’s closer to Larissa than anyone, and has shared more with her than he ever thought possible... this feels wrong. Like he’s violating her.
He doesn’t think he can do this.
[Name withheld] is in a
relationship with Larissa Brady
He has to do this.
He opens her auto – and instantly spots something that shouldn’t be there.
Extra code. Nested self-executable code, so sophisticated it looks like an auto’s operating system. It isn’t, but it is fully integrated into Larissa’s auto, like an extension jutting out from a building.
It’s a program, a super-app. One Nick doesn’t recognise. He looks for authentication certificates, finds none. He looks for company signatures, finds none. He looks for any of the ways a legal, authorised program might identify itself, finds none.
Within moments he realises that this is blackware, works out what it’s designed to do, and guesses what its name is.
K8.
“Oh my God,” Nick groans, feeling so sick he clamps a hand across his mouth.
It can’t be there. (But it is.)
It’s impossible. (But there’s nothing else it could be.)
She cannot afford this. (But she had a windfall not long ago.)
This can’t be bought in the UK. (But it probably can in Trinidad, which is outside IIR jurisdiction.)
Larissa wouldn’t do something technical like this, she wouldn’t know how, she just wouldn’t! (But Larissa has a K8 program installed into her auto, it’s right there on the server, it’s a fact.)
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