by Guy Morpuss
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ I said. ‘I haven’t killed anyone. And I’ve no reason to suppose that anyone else in our commune has. But I wouldn’t know. I don’t know what Sierra does when she is in here, any more than she knows what I get up to. Legally, we’re separate people. I’m no more responsible for what Sierra does than she is for me.’
Guskov sat back and looked at me quizzically. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘I had expected a denial. It’s an odd life that you schizos choose. Trusting your existence to others over whom you have no control. I appreciate that legally you and this Sierra are different. But as you might have guessed, the law isn’t always enforced in the park. My employee had his neck broken. It must have taken someone of considerable strength and speed to do that. You appear to have both.’ He looked over my head at the andis. ‘Stas, get the girl.’
Stas stepped outside. We sat in silence until he returned, dragging a reluctant woman by one arm. ‘Let me go!’ she shouted, making a futile effort to pull herself free. Stas turned her to face me.
She might once have been attractive, but her red hair was dishevelled, her eyes puffy, her cheeks tear-stained. She lurched forward when she saw me, straining against her captor.
‘That’s him … her,’ she shouted. ‘She’s the one Karl arranged to meet last night. She killed him.’
‘That’s what we are finding out,’ said Guskov, calmly. ‘That’s all I wanted. Take her back out.’
‘No,’ she screamed, as Stas half carried her towards the door. ‘Check her clothes. That’ll prove it.’
‘I’ll decide that,’ said Guskov, watching silently as she kicked against Stas and cursed them both.
When the door had closed he turned back to me.
‘So, Mr White, it’s not looking good, is it? Your Ms Summers arranges to meet my employee, and shortly after he’s dead. And then I hear that this morning you’re sniffing around the park with one of my pills, asking about my merchandise. That was unwise.’ He paused, and sighed.
‘It all points to you, doesn’t it? The trouble is that I’m a simple man. Unlike the authorities I don’t have the ability to extract one mind from your body and erase it, or put it in a stasis tank for a hundred years. Even if I did, it’s not a very visual punishment. It doesn’t send the same message as hanging you from the ceiling while my pet doctor shaves slices off you until you can no longer scream. Karl may not have been worth much but I need to be seen to be protecting my people. It makes them nervous when one of them dies and I don’t kill someone in response.’
This was looking bad.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘What did she mean? Check my clothes?’
Guskov pushed his glasses up his nose, blinking through them at me. Then he tossed something across the desk to me. I caught it awkwardly. It was a bright red button, thread hanging from it.
‘She meant that. Recognise it?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing to do with us.’ Although as I said that I realised that it did trigger some memory. I had seen it somewhere, and recently. ‘Why does it matter?’
‘My dead employee was clutching this in his hand when we found him. It seems reasonable to assume he tore it off whoever killed him.’
‘Hang on,’ I said, turning the button over in my hand. Trying to remember. It was so close. I shut my eyes and I could see it. Yes – that was it. ‘I know who it was,’ I said quickly. ‘Give me a moment.’ I pulled up one of the clips I’d been viewing earlier, and there it was. A row of red buttons on the cuff of a black sleeve.
I looked up at Guskov. ‘I can’t send you this. I’m blocked. But I need to show you.’
‘Show Vincent,’ he said.
The andi walked over to me and we touched fingers. Vincent stood still for a moment, then nodded and walked round the desk to Guskov. He passed on the clip.
It was Amy Bird, the previous night, emerging from the alley next to the Death’s Head. While Guskov was viewing it I found the footage from the drone, showing her briefly stepping out of the warehouse. I paused the clip as she raised an arm to shield herself from the drone, and zoomed in. One of the buttons was missing, a torn thread all that remained. Yes.
‘There’s one more,’ I said, holding out my hand to Vincent. We went through the same procedure. ‘Check the coordinates. Is that where your dealer’s body was found?’
Guskov sat back, lips pursed, pushing his glasses up his nose again. He said nothing. To me it seemed clear. But he didn’t seem convinced.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘It’s obviously your andi, Amy Bird, who did this. I don’t know why, but it’s nothing to do with us. Maybe this dealer of yours, Karl, stepped out of line, and Bird thought you wouldn’t care if she disposed of him. Maybe she was worried that Karl was going to tell Sierra about your pill operation. There’s nothing to prove that Sierra was involved.’
‘Proof?’ said Guskov. ‘That isn’t how things work round here, Mr White. You sound like a lawyer. I don’t like lawyers.’ He grimaced, as though the idea of dealing with them caused him physical pain. ‘You are also badly misinformed. This Bird, as you call her, is not “my andi”. And I don’t make my living selling pills. Showing me that Bird killed Karl really doesn’t help you.’ He stared at me, tapping his fingers on the wooden desk.
‘What did you sell us if it wasn’t pills?’ I asked.
I was finding it hard to think with the noise from the beating of his fingers on the desk. Each tap drove a nail into my brain. I started hitting my hand against the side of my leg in the same rhythm, to drown out the sound. Sometimes it helps.
He looked at me oddly, and stopped. I breathed out. He leaned forward and rested his chin on steepled fingers, staring at me through the gold-rimmed glasses. My life was being weighed. His expression didn’t change until eventually he laughed coldly. ‘Perhaps you are as naïve as you pretend to be,’ he said. ‘That makes it even better. Come with me. I’m going to show you something. Then I will decide what to do with you.’
Vincent opened the door. The three of us followed yet another corridor and went down four flights of stairs. There was a smell of damp. It was colder now. After a minute we came to a heavy metal door, which the andi opened. Lights flickered on in the room beyond.
We stepped into a vast, cold, windowless space. The roof was the height of the building, several storeys high, dark apart from occasional skylights. It stretched a good hundred metres back, crisscrossed with metal gantries and stairs, many rusted and hanging at odd angles. Ground level was a jumble of machinery. It was a mess. I don’t like mess.
The only nods to modernity were the lights and two rows of what looked like glass coffins in a corner of the room near the door that had been cleared of debris. There were ten in each row, neatly ordered. Twenty in total. Excellent.
‘What is this place?’ I asked.
‘It was once a meatpacking factory,’ he said. ‘In the days when we still did that. Look.’ He pointed to large hooks hanging from an overhead conveyer belt. ‘Now it is my storeroom. It has a natural coolness that helps in ensuring that my … merchandise doesn’t spoil.’ He gestured to either side. ‘This is what I sell, and this is what you – one of you – bought from me.’
I walked over and peered through the glass lid of the nearest coffin. A blank but surprisingly lifelike face stared back at me. The body was coated in a layer of slime.
‘What are they?’ I asked. ‘Bodies?’
‘Andis,’ said Guskov. ‘After people die in the arenas the occasional andi goes missing on the way to recycling. Not enough to be a problem, but enough to make a profit. They end up here. The pills are just a sideline. Mostly my andis are bought by those who come to the park and then realise that they are too scared to play but don’t want to die. So I give them a body with no end date. I shouldn’t say this, but most regret their purchase. A death park is a grim place to live. What I really provide them with is the chance to live a little longer and drink themselves to death in one of the bars I
own. So I win all round. Sometimes I even get the same body back to sell all over again.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘I ought to get some sort of eco award for all the recycling I do. Or sometimes I sell them as dandis. They’ve all got basic AI and it’s easy enough to turn on the personality that the customer wants: personal butler, sex slave, whatever.’
‘Are you saying that one of us bought an andi from you?’ I asked. ‘We’ve only been in the park a week. That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘That is all I can tell you. One of you bought Bird. The andi that you have been trying to find belongs to you, not me.’
‘Why would any of us want an andi?’ I said. ‘It makes no sense.’
‘Are you doubting my word?’ he asked sharply.
‘Of course not,’ I said quickly. ‘So who is Bird? We know she’s an andi, but whose mind is inside?’
‘How would I know?’ said Guskov. ‘She was a dandi when she walked away from here. Basic AI, but nothing more. But dandis don’t kill people. And that wasn’t a dandi we saw in the clips you showed me.’
It certainly wasn’t a dandi that had scammed Kate into giving up the access codes. That had been a human mind. I still couldn’t understand what one of us had been doing buying an andi almost as soon as we got to the death park.
Guskov interrupted my thoughts.
‘So, what to do with you, Mr White? Who may have killed Karl – or had him killed – but appears to know nothing about it.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t me. And even if it was Bird it doesn’t mean it was one of us. Besides, killing us would cause you trouble. At the moment we have the highest time credit of anyone in the park – more than twenty-four years. We’ve got dozens of challenges. If we disappear, someone is going to look into it. I know I’m blocked, but I’m sure Vincent was picked up at some point on our walk over here. No doubt you could bury an investigation but it would cost you. Let’s not do something we’ll both regret.’
Guskov smiled. ‘I can say with some confidence that you will regret it more than I do. Vincent has buried many things for me. I’m sure it wouldn’t trouble him to add you to the list.’
‘That may be true,’ I said quickly. ‘But you could make a profit from this, and still set an example. If you kill us outside an arena our twenty-four years disappear. Everyone loses. But I could transfer some time to you in compensation for whatever part my associates may have had in your employee’s death. We all win.’
He breathed out slowly, studying me. ‘I’ve got a better idea. Vincent, we need to get rid of the girlfriend. Then spread the rumour that she had Karl killed – lover’s spat or something. You know the routine.’
‘All right, boss,’ said Vincent. ‘Should I give her to the doctor? He’s been asking for someone new, and he’d pay well.’
‘No,’ said Guskov. ‘Too messy. Sell her to an arena. She can be bait in one of the games, and she’ll disappear.’
‘All right, boss.’
Guskov turned back to me. ‘As for you, Mr White, you’re right that it would cause me some inconvenience to kill you. At the end of the day I work for profit, and I hate to see waste. I’ll make you an offer. I don’t want to appear greedy. I will let you go in return for a flat fee of ten years.’
I hesitated before answering. That was a lot of time. But I wasn’t sure that I had much choice.
He smiled. ‘Choose carefully before you try to bargain with me. You can take the deal or try to fight your way out of here, which would be entertaining in itself. For you it is, quite literally, the offer of a lifetime. In fact, all your lifetimes.’
There was no chance I was going to fight my way out past his two thugs. But ten years – that was half a lifetime. No one was going to be happy with me for giving that up. Then again, we’d come by it cheaply, and better to lose it than die. I had no choice.
‘All right,’ I said reluctantly.
‘Good. Let’s go back upstairs and sort out the legalities. After that, Mr White, it is probably best that we don’t meet again. It might end badly. And not for me.’
SIERRA
DAY THREE
16:00–21:00
My day didn’t start well. I woke at the wrong time and no one was telling me anything.
There was nothing from Mike, and despite everything going on I had nothing from Kate or Ben either.
All I had to work out what the hell was going on was an aggressive message from Alex, suggesting that I was using again, and that I was lying to him. I didn’t bother to reply.
If they didn’t want my help that was their problem.
Then, to entirely ruin my day, a message from ParkGov appeared.
ParkGov to S. Summers and A. Du Bois. One of the conditions of your entry into the park was that you would, if required, complete at least one challenge per cycle. You have yet to accept or complete any challenge this cycle. We have therefore assigned you one at random [details attached]. If you do not complete this challenge by midnight it will count as a forfeit. You may choose to leave the park before midnight, in which event you will be fined one half of your accrued time for failure to complete a challenge in this cycle.
Great. How had the others let this happen to us? Kate was meant to keep on top of this. I already had good ideas as to how we were going to spend the time that we had. I wasn’t going to give up half of it to the park.
I looked at the challenge.
Revillagigedo Island – Moral Dilemmas
The submarine USS Marlin lies trapped under 1,000 feet of water. You must make a series of command decisions to decide who lives and who dies. Are you up to the challenge of naval command?
The name was stupid. So unpronounceable it was probably real. This sounded like a game that could play to my strengths. One of us was going to have to do it, and there was no way I was leaving it for Alex. He was too weak. He struggled with any decisions, let alone tough ones. No. This one was down to me. This would be the first game I’d played in the park. The others didn’t seem to think I was capable of winning.
I would show them.
•
I was halfway to the arena when a man stepped out in front of me. He was long-haired, tall and handsome in a rough sort of way.
‘Ms Weston,’ he began. Then hesitated. ‘No. Ms Summers. You schizos are a confusing lot.’
How did Kate know someone like him?
‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m Godfried,’ he said. ‘I wanted to talk to Ms Weston. I thought maybe I could help with whatever game you’re playing.’
‘Why? And how could you help?’
He hesitated again. ‘I … I can give you something that would help you win.’
‘Why would you help us?’
‘What’s the game?’
‘It’s got some weird name.’ I checked again. ‘Revillagigedo Island. Do you know it?’
He pulled a face. ‘That’s a tough one. No one’s won that in a long while.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s nothing I’ve got that will help with that. All I can give you is a piece of advice. You’ve got to harden your heart. Good luck.’
I walked on. Well that was a useless load of shit. How did any of that help me?
It was easy enough to find the arena. There were several people going in. Why was it so busy? I followed them and crossed over to the reception desk. ‘I’m here for the game. What’s happening?’
The man behind the desk looked up at me. ‘Ms Summers. Let me find you a room. It’s busy today. This is the default game ParkGov has allocated. So our fee will be twenty-five per cent.’ He paused. ‘Room 14. Down the right-hand corridor. Best of luck.’
I nodded, and followed his directions. I wasn’t going to need luck.
•
Welcome, Ms Summers
Game:
Revillagigedo Island – Moral Dilemmas
Winner:
Any players who complete all stages
Stages:
Four
Revillagigedo Island/USS Marlin
Ms Summers, in the game that you are about to play you will be presented with various leadership decisions. Importantly, in this game you will not know that you are in a simulation. The scenarios and the choices will seem real to you.
There are fifteen players competing, with accumulated time of 18.5 years. You will not interact with each other, but each of you will face the same scenarios. The winner will be the one who makes the right choices and survives all four stages of the game. The survivor, or survivors, will share the time of those who lose.
Make the wrong decision, or die in the game, and you will die in real life.
The game will commence in two minutes.
18.5 years? That couldn’t be right. We were bringing more than twenty-four years on our own. I quickly checked our credit. 14.2 years? How had that happened? We had lost ten years overnight. And that meant the other players were barely bringing in four years between them. Thanks to Kate failing to choose a game we’d ended up playing the dregs of the death park. It was hardly worth it.
I didn’t have time for this. Something had gone wrong. Why wasn’t anyone telling me anything?
•
Revillagigedo Island, Alaska. I am seated in the command centre of the United States Navy’s Southeast Alaska Acoustic Measurement Facility – SEAFAC. Below me, running fifty miles north and south, is the Behm Canal, a sheltered natural channel separating the island from the mainland.
It is a clear night and the surface of the water is calm.
A calmness that contrasts with what is happening 1,000 feet below aboard the USS Marlin, a ballistic missile submarine that had been undergoing acoustic testing in the canal. At 2:28 we received the following transmission:
USS Marlin struck unidentified object at 940 feet. Forward compartments breached and sealed. Forward crew presumed dead. Unable to surface. Flood doors sealed. Commander and XO only control room crew alive. Estimate four to five hours’ breathable air. Believe engineering crew in aft compartments alive. Doors sealed, cannot communicate, but respond to tapping. Advise urgently. Captain Rogers, CO.