Halting State

by Charles Stross

  Most of the offices you pass are empty and dark, but a faint rime of light frosts the night ahead of you as you near it. Glancing sideways, you see that the door is set to opaque; the light barely leaks out around the edges, and if the passage hadn’t been dark, you’d never have noticed it. You hesitate as you reach it, on the verge of knocking out of sheer curiosity, but then you hear the ugly voices.

  “—right off! We’re in deep shit if this goes on. They raided the MacDonald tenement, did you know that? And those bastards from DBA are digging too deep. If they keep on going, it’ll be obvious what’s going on.”

  “And I’m telling you that if we chill and sit still until the put options vest, they won’t be able to prove anything. It’s running on rails, yes? And we haven’t done anything. So, we’re being targeted. Luckily they don’t know what they’re looking for, and they can’t prove anything. So, just—chill. Stop fretting. Lie low and wait for it to blow over.”

  “What about your friends? Can they do something for us? Arrange a distraction, maybe? Muddy the water?”

  “I’ve got them working on it already, but I can’t promise anything. Leave that side of things to me. What I want to know is, can you hold up your end?”

  Pause. “I’ll do my best. It’s just, with these fucking pests sniffing around underfoot, they keep getting in my face. If we don’t get them out of here soon…”

  “Leave them to me, I said. My friends are working on getting them pulled out.”

  The voices fall, and you suddenly realize you’re standing here outside the door, and the mummy lobe gooses you with a red-hot trident: Don’t you know it’s rude to eavesdrop? It screeches in your ear. You wince, and tiptoe guiltily away, trying not to think too hard about what whoever they were were talking about. It wasn’t entirely clear, but it sounded like they were simply talking about ways of getting Dietrich-Brunner to pull out. And if you were in their shoes, what else would you do?

  Up on the surface, you let yourself out of the office, and the door swings shut behind you before you realize that you’ve got no way back inside. The last vestiges of daylight stain the sky a pale blue above the black silhouettes of the trees. You haven’t booked a taxi, either. You trudge down Drum Brae towards the distant rumble of traffic from Queensferry Road, bringing up a bus map overlay on your glasses. You’ve just missed one by three minutes, and they’re down to three an hour at this time of evening. Great. At least it’s a warm night, without any real risk of a spring deluge.

  When you get home, you find a letter lying on top of the pile of spam on the floor just inside your front door. (At least, it looks like a real piece of correspondence—lately the junk mailers have been wising up, disguising advertising come-ons as tax demands and gas bills.) It’s addressed to you by name and they used a real old-fashioned postage stamp. You tear it open and four glossy photographs fall out.

  Heart pounding, you pick them up and hold them where you can see them properly, under the hall light. The first photograph is the entrance to Hayek Associates’ offices. You flip past it to the second. This one looks like a primary-school playground. There’s a cluster of wee ones playing in it, and you don’t need the dotted red circle someone’s helpfully Photoshopped into the image to tell you you’re meant to be looking at Elsie. You feel sick, but you can’t stop yourself looking at the third picture. It shows the front door of a house you know quite well, and that was your sister on the doorstep, her and Mary in her school uniform, in the early-morning light, looking very young. The picture’s a little blurry, as if the photographer was trying to conceal the camera. As well they might, because as soon as you get a good look at the fourth picture, you put them all down and speed-dial the number the policeman gave you after the dodgy voice call, hyperventilating and trying not to panic.

  The last photograph shows an empty butcher’s slab.

  SUE: Heavy Mob

  You’re still eating your breakfast the next morning when you get an IM from Liz: SHIT DUE TO HIT FAN AT 0915 MEET ME AT INGLISTON. It’s so unexpected you blow orange juice bubbles through your nose, much to the wee one’s amusement, then end up swearing at the pain in your sinuses. You don’t have a car today, but you get your move on anyhow, and you make sure you’re on the tram out to the airport in time for Liz’s promised faeco-ventilatory intersection.

  It’s the tail-end of the morning commuter rush. Liz is stalking up and down outside the entrance to the shiny new terminal on what used to be the highland show-ground, her face pinched and tense: She’s smoking a cigarette, which surprises you—you didn’t think she was the type. When you approach her, she drops it, pulls a face, and grinds it into the tarmac. “You’re late.”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  “You don’t? Ah—shit.”

  You blink back red overlays—the airport is a kaleidoscopic blur of too much information in CopSpace—and focus on her. She looks tired, as if she’s been up since too early in the morning. “What’s going on?”

  “Visitors from Europol,” she says absently, shoving her specs up her nose. “Some kind of special operations team from Brussels. Here, have a look.” A huge, indigestible dollop of something descends on the centre of your desktop, and you just have time to read the title of the opening page before she adds, “Didn’t mean to bite your head off. Looks like they’re here.”

  She turns and marches into the concourse, and you hurry to keep up, trying not to go wall-eyed as you skim the summary. Corpus juris, Europol agreements, bilateral treaty of secession arrangements for justice, law, and order—it’s all bullshit. What it boils down to is—

  Six men and women in dark suits and dark glasses marching towards you from the EU arrivals exit: the heavy mob converging from London and Brussels with stainless steel briefcases and secure identities. “Inspector Kavanaugh,” says their leader, not extending a hand. “Our cars are waiting. Who’s this—ah, I see. Good morning, Sergeant Smith. You will come with us.”

  A fleet of driverless BMW SUVs appear, bouncing slowly over the traffic pillows, and pull in next to you, flagrantly ignoring the red route markings and security notices. They’ve got diplomatic plates. Doors spring open, and you find yourself gently inserted into the empty driver’s seat of the third vehicle as Liz and the leader of the hit squad slide into the back. The steering wheel twitches hesitantly, then as the doors click shut it spins hard over and the yuppiemobile accelerates fast. You try not to shudder: You hate the whole idea that some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre has got your life—and half a dozen other lives—in his hands. At least on the motorways the cars steer themselves, that’s within the capabilities of today’s AI. “Please switch off your personal electronics,” says the man in dark glasses. “The car is shielded, but this is to go no further.” His English is as perfect and accentless as an old-time BBC presenter’s.

  You peel off your glasses and hit the Judas switch on your phone, then the antiquated TETRA terminal, and finally—when he clears his throat impatiently—your cameras and biomonitors. “Which department are you with?” asks Liz.

  “Officially, you’ll find the plaque on our door reads ‘Organisation pour Nourrir et Consolider L’Europe.’” Your watching the Man in Black in the driver’s mirror, and his cheek doesn’t twitch. Behind him, in the jump-seat in the cargo area, his companion is opening up a Peli briefcase and exposing an array of hardware that you’re really not supposed to fly with. “It’s our little joke—the only one. We’re not the Man from UNCLE, and this isn’t a game.”

  Liz, and you’ve got to give her credit for keeping a level head, is having none of it. “Then you’d better tell me precisely who you are and what the hell you think you’re doing here. Because right now you are on my patch, and you are breaking the speed limit, violating at least three different firearms regulations, and if you don’t pull over on my request, I’ll have to add kidnapping two police officers to the charge sheet.”

  You carefully move your left hand to your belt and make sure
there’s nothing in the way of your wee tinny of whooping gas. Because if the skipper puts it like that…

  “You have nothing to worry about,” says the spook. “My credentials.” He pulls out a passport with a white cover, then a fancy ID badge. Liz takes them.

  “You know damn well I can’t verify these while I’m off-line,” she snaps. “The name’s right, but how do you expect me to confirm you’re the real thing? Tell me, Kemal, assuming that’s your real name, where are you taking us?”

  The man in the back finishes screwing the stock onto his weapon—it looks like a cross between a sawn-off shotgun and a paintball gun—and puts it down on the case.

  “It relates to your current case, unfortunately. We’re going to visit a warehouse in Leith,” says the head spook. “My colleagues have already instructed your SO6 to seal off the area while we raid it. You are here to witness and act as local liaison because you are already familiar with this case. My colleagues in the next car”—he nods at the vehicle immediately behind you—“are going to proceed to a collocation centre in the Gyle in order to shut down the main backbone between here and the south. The fourth car is going to visit the emergency control centre and serve a crisis note. Their job is to shut down all communications in the target area. Finally—”

  “You’re going to what?” Liz explodes.

  “Finally, the Royal Danish Air Force have kindly consented to let us use one of their E7C aircraft, assigned to ERRF for infowar duties and counter-terrorism support. In case the target is defended.”

  By this point your jaw’s hanging open; you’ve just about forgotten the can of Mace, or your indignation about being more or less kidnapped. “What’s in the warehouse?” you ask.

  Kemal—if that’s his name—leans back. Now he’s the one who looks like he’s had a sleepless night. “Your investigation into the disappearance of Mr. Nigel MacDonald, and the report of your findings in his apartment, attracted our attention. Have you identified the body in your ongoing murder investigation from the graveyard on Constitution Street yet?”

  “No.” Liz looks grim. “If you know something—”

  “I am sorry I cannot identify the body for you, but I can definitely assure you that it does not belong to Mr. MacDonald. And your speculation about a blacknet, possibly owned by the Moscow mafiya, has been noted.”

  “You’d better explain.”

  “The equipment you discovered in Mr. MacDonald’s apartment was cloned by your ICE officers. When they logged the details of what they found on NCIS, we were alerted. We cannot tell you what the equipment was for, but two similar installations have been recovered in Prague and Warsaw in the past four months. The installation appears to be operated by a non-state actor for illegal purposes—”

  “Are you talking terrorism here?” Liz interrupts.

  Kemal’s expression is stony. “Life would be a lot simpler if we were dealing with a cell of simple-minded religious obsessives with a grudge against the modern world. I’m afraid it may be something much worse—”

  “Because this is my city you’re talking about, and I happen to have a duty to protect its inhabitants and uphold the law. Is public safety at stake? I need to know!”

  “Not”—Kemal pauses as the car speeds up, hurtling uphill to merge with the morning traffic heading for the city by-pass—“hmm. That question is difficult to answer. I think it’s safe to say that there is no immediate threat, and there are no biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons involved; but failure to isolate the warehouse and impose a total communications blockade will, at the very least, allow some extremely dangerous information to escape. There is also some uncertainty as to whether the warehouse is occupied, and if so, whether the people inside it are armed. Our worst-case scenario is that we are facing a foreign Special Forces unit with emplaced defences and demolition charges—but if that’s the case, we’re fucked anyway.”

  “Who’s fucked? Us? Your department?”

  “No, Inspector: the European Union.”

  Either the car’s air-conditioning is fierce, or your skin’s crawling. “Why are you dragging us into this, then?” you demand, your voice rising. “We’re the Polis, not Mission bloody Impossible!”

  “You’re already involved, and we want to keep this as quiet as possible,” Kemal explains. “You will need these phones and glasses, please put them on immediately.”

  “Why—”

  “Your CopSpace has been compromised. So has your TETRA network, but at least you can dispatch backup by voice control. Please? This has already been arranged for. We need you tied into our grid before the operation commences.”

  He passes you a pair of heavy, black-rimmed military spectacles and a ruggedized phone. You make eye contact with Liz, in the mirror, and she nods, minutely: You put the glasses on and boot them. There’s a brief flicker as they check your irises against their preloaded biometrics, then the world outside the BMW is drenched in unfamiliar information all the way to the horizon. You glance to your left, out to the north, where a green diamond is orbiting above the Kingdom of Fife. A quick zoom shows you that it’s real, a lumbering wide-body airliner in military grey, the knobbly outlines of high-bandwidth antennae studding its flanks like barnacles on a whale. Or at least, these goggles have been programmed to think it’s real. Once you accept someone else’s augmented reality, there’s really no telling, is there? For all you and Liz can tell until you’re plugged back into the comforting panopticon of CopSpace, this might just be some kind of elaborate live-action role-playing game.

  The convoy is past the gyratory and heading towards Queensferry Road way too fast, probably racking up speeding tickets at a rate best measured in euros per second. All the traffic lights are switching to green in front of you as the steering wheel twitches from side to side: Red info bubbles above anonymous grey roadside boxes inform you that they’ve been 0wnZ0red by the Royal Danish Air Force. You rest your hand on the wheel, and it shivers like a live animal. “What do you expect to find?” asks Liz. “And who is the adversary?”

  “Hopefully, just a warehouse full of servers. Maybe a satellite dish or two.” Kemal is soothing. “I’d like nothing more than for this to be a false alert. In which case, we shall make our apologies, pay our speeding fines, and be on our way without further ado.”

  Liz snorts. “That’ll be the day.” She reaches for her phone: “Now I’ve got to call the chief—”

  “Not until we arrive. As I said, your terrestrial trunked radio network has been penetrated.”

  ELAINE: Alone in the Dome

  Despite the late-night chase through the darkened streets of the New Town, you sleep like a log and awake refreshed and ready to face a new day. You spend a brisk half-hour in the health suite, then shower and hit the hotel restaurant for some breakfast. Chris and the others have cut and run back to the big smoke already: Well, tough. You’ve got Jack and his magic code to give you some leads, and you’ve got access to Hayek’s offices, which is enough to be getting on with.

  You’ve still got the office suite that Chris paid for, so you go down there and start going through the backlog of office email and project notes that have been building up since last Friday, when reality got put on hold for the duration. By twenty past nine your mood is sinking, and you’re mildly annoyed when you realize that Jack is late. So you text him, and get no reply—and no delivery notification. Odd.

  With Jack off-line—and therefore no access to the results of his overnight trawl—you’re at a loose end. So you go out into the mezzanine and attempt to convince the coffee machine to give you something drinkable, and while you’re waiting for the bubbling and clanking to stop, you get an incoming call. From Jack, of course.

  “Where’ve you been?” you demand.

  “Sorry—I had to go to the police station. I got another nastygram, this time on paper: They wanted to examine it and look for prints.”

  Oops. You wince even though he can’t see you. “Oh. Where are you now?”

 
; “Stuck in traffic, but I should be with you in about five minutes. I thought I should call ahead, though. The overnight run was mostly a success, and it found something interesting. There’s a likely-looking auction going on in one of the clearing-house sites; the stuff on sale looks to be an exact match for some of the stolen magic items. What makes it interesting is the ping latency to the current owner of the items—he’s in Glasgow. If we can get Hayek to twist Kensu’s arm into disclosing their customer contact details, we may be able to pay them a visit.”

  “Oh, that’s good news.” You’re slightly startled to discover how eager you are. “IM me what you’ve got, and I’ll get onto Wayne immediately. What do you suggest we do?”

  “Don’t know yet. See where the lead goes, I suppose…” Twenty minutes later you’re holed up in the office with Jack on the line, a couple of half-empty coffee cups and some half-baked theories. Wayne is being a pain: His phone insists he’s in a meeting and refuses to put your call through. But at least Jack’s got his lead. “The insurance claim request got fifty-one responses before I kicked back last night. I fed them in and set the spider running on the two largest auction sites that handle cross-game Zone trades. Twelve of the items turned up immediately, in a single stash that KingHorror9 is trying to shift. KingHorror9 is currently logged as active in Forgotten Futures, and a quick ping test suggests they’re local—latency is under ten milliseconds. So I think if we can get their name and address, we can go collar them immediately.”

  “If they’re local,” you warn him. “Because—”