Ghostland

by Duncan Ralston

  It all seemed like overkill to Ben but he supposed they must have been meant to keep ghosts out rather than in. Which got him wondering just how safe the people who made this park really thought it was that they would feel the necessity to build themselves an impenetrable fortress right in the middle of it.

  They all piled out of the golf cart and headed for the building. Demont approached the door, sorting through the set of keys on his belt. He selected one and tried it. It didn't fit so he tried the next. As the second key slid home he grinned. "There's the sweet spot," he muttered, twisting it in the lock.

  The bolt made a heavy clunk as it unlatched and the door gasped open as if it had an airtight seal, revealing a long dim hallway with cinderblock walls beyond.

  "Ladies first," Demont said, holding the door.

  "And people say chivalry is dead," Lilian grumbled.

  Demont gave her a wide smile. "No better place to resurrect it."

  She rolled her eyes and stepped through the door. Allison went next, thanking him. Ben followed. Demont pulled the door shut behind them and locked it. It made the hiss of a tight seal. He flicked a switch on the wall and the overhead lights buzzed on one after another, lighting a path down the narrow corridor. The air smelled like cold concrete and ozone.

  "Probably best if I go first from here on out," he said, tucking the keyring back into his pocket as he slipped between Allison and Lilian.

  "Oh, we 'ladies' are just the canaries in the coal mine," Lilian said.

  Demont laughed as they followed him down the hall. "There's nothing dangerous in here, Lilian. The big boss just doesn't like strangers playing in her sandbox. See the cameras?" He pointed to another tinted plastic bubble above them and a second where the hall veered left. "This building is the safest place in the park."

  "Is that because of the poles outside?" Ben asked.

  Demont winked back at him. "That's part of it."

  "How do those things work, anyway?"

  "I'll leave that to Miss Amblin. She likes to talk about her inventions."

  Ben followed close behind as Demont turned the corner and headed down another corridor without a door. At the end the hall they took another left turn.

  "Is it just me, or are we going around in circles?" Lilian asked. She was touching the outer wall, the way she did in mazes. Ben could see she was becoming increasingly aggravated with each left turn. They were violating her cardinal maze-running rule, but at least they were keeping to the outside. Otherwise she might have wigged out.

  "Another good catch," Demont said. "You guys are on fire."

  The next hall ended at a cinderblock wall. To its immediate left stood another metal door. Demont approached it and pressed a button on the intercom. The small speaker crackled. "Who goes there?" The woman's voice echoed in the narrow hall.

  Demont waved up at the camera and thumbed the intercom button. "It's me, Miss Amblin. Demont Hudson. I'm a Suicide Prevention Officer. I've brought some people I think you need to speak to."

  After an overly long pause, she asked, "To what is this pertaining?"

  "Well, Miss Amblin, it seems one of our ghosts has been harassing this young woman—"

  The door buzzed before he could finish and the Maglock disengaged with a clunk. He pulled the door open and ushered them into a large room reminiscent of NASA's Mission Control Center. Two full stories tall, its far wall was taken up entirely by security monitors. Ben thought there had to be at least fifty of them, rotating through various views and angles of the park, showing visitors walking through the exhibits, screaming, laughing, eating, everyone having a good time. He saw the tram ride and the funhouse, the asylum, the theater, the circus, cameras both inside and out. The security monitors must have been equipped with the same technology as the headsets, because in every shot the ghosts were just as visible as the guests.

  There were only a handful of employees seated at computer terminals, far less than the desks available, which led in rows toward the monitor wall. The rest of them must have been at lunch.

  Sara Jane Amblin approached the four of them down the aisle between the desks. She wore a black suit jacket and pencil skirt and the tightness of her face made her look harried, like the interruption was taking up her precious time. The wall of monitors reflected on the lenses of her thick-rimmed glasses.

  "So," she said brusquely, folding her hands at her waist as she turned to face Lilian. "You believe one of our apparitions has been bothering you, is that correct?"

  "I don't believe anything," Lilian said, sticking out her chin. "It happened."

  "Hmm," the woman said with a thoughtful nod.

  "Apparently, he was very physical with her," Demont said. "Pushing her. Pulling her hair. Just like what happened with Parker. He tried to cut her—"

  "Nothing was ever proven in that instance," the inventor said.

  "Maybe not. But two strangers come forward with basically the same story about the same ghost, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt."

  Sara Jane Amblin stared off at the wall of monitors, her eyes narrowing. After a moment she turned rigidly and asked Lilian, "Are you hurt?"

  Lilian shook her head.

  "Well, that's a relief, at least." The inventor looked thoughtfully at her hands, still clasped at her waist. "Perhaps we should consider deactivating him."

  "Deactivate?" Ben said. "You can just shut them down like that?"

  The woman studied him a moment. "I suppose since you've gotten a peek behind the curtain it wouldn't be so awful to divulge a few trade secrets." She flashed a brief smile that didn't reach her striking dark eyes. "Technically, what we'd be doing is removing several lines of code in the computer program which holds them in a form of stasis. Although Welles was one of Rex's favorites, it would be a shame to lose him."

  Allison looked confused. "Hang on… are they ghosts or are they all just holograms?"

  Sara Jane gave her a patient smile. "Oh, I assure you they are very real. You see, wherever we go our bodies leave waste energy behind, something like car exhaust. The most volatile waste energy is released when a person passes on. All of that waste energy—or dead energy, as we like to call it—has to go somewhere. In a sense, death is like an oil spill. Some deaths, especially violent deaths, are more like nuclear meltdowns. These are what laypeople think of as hauntings. My Recurrence Field technology traps this dead energy and amplifies it. This room, all of these computers, they're what make the so-called 'ghosts' visible to guests through your Augmented Reality headsets."

  "So, they're ghosts and holograms," Ben said, thinking he understood.

  The inventor nodded. "In a way. The tech is similar to holography, the difference being that holography uses reflected light, whereas what we like to call spectography tracks these wandering pockets of dead energy and synthesizes their analogs on our computer array."

  Ben nodded, finding it difficult to follow but not wanting to appear dull.

  "Of course, our digital effects team has taken liberties in certain cases where the imprints aren't quite as observable and the photographs and history are lacking. In essence, every single apparition in this park has a digital imprint as well as their energy imprint—you can think of the ghosts you see as avatars of the dead energy they've left behind. The Recurrence Field uses that digital imprint to physically contain them within a fixed loop, repeating the same actions and events ad infinitum. Or whatever we choose to make them do. The Ghostland program controls these loops and sends three-dimensional avatars to your headsets, but since both the avatars and your AR headsets are often required to interact with their environment, the main program also has some control over the physical tech in the exhibits, like doors, lighting, and various moving objects. Does that make sense?"

  "I told you she likes to explain it," Demont said with a smile.

  She gave him a look of annoyance.

  "S-sorry, Miss Amblin."

  "This all sounds very… exploitative," Allison said.

&n
bsp; The inventor's attention snapped toward her. "I assure you it's not. With respect, these aren't sentient beings we're discussing. Without the tech we've created here they would simply float aimlessly, like sightless fish forever bumping into the glass of their tanks."

  "Okay," Lilian said, "then how did Morton Welles chase me from the tram?"

  "Morton Welles is what we call a 'free-roamer,'" the inventor explained. "Garrote insisted we have several of them. The Recurrence Field keeps Welles connected to the Ghost Tram show and away from his natural habitat, so to speak—the Bright Falls Sanitarium—which he would naturally gravitate toward without the restrictions. I think he likes the power trip, frankly." She rubbed her chin in thought. "But there's nothing preventing him from roaming beyond the tram. No ESP—"

  "Extra-sensory perception," Ben said.

  "Actually, it stands for 'ElectroStatic Precipitator,'" the inventor corrected him, making him feel dumb for having spoken up. "Those poles outside the building, surrounding the exhibits, they generate negative ions—a well-known repellent of dead energy. You may have heard some cultures use salt to ward off spirits? Once I concluded it was the negative ions present in the salt that appeared to prevent dead energy from crossing these barriers, it was a short mental leap to employing ESPs for the same purpose. Lines of salt all over the park just wouldn't be feasible or very stable, would they?"

  Ben parsed this. "So basically, you've got a bunch of evil ghosts floating around the park like dogs off their leash."

  "Only a matter of time before one of them bites," Allison added with a scowl of disapproval.

  "They're not off-leash, per se. It might seem… problematic, to say the least, but it was a stipulation in Mr. Garrote's will, and the Hedgewood Foundation was adamant his wishes be adhered to. Why he'd picked some of the most violent apparitions to be free-roamers has always been a bit of a mystery, but our exhibits are completely safe, and this is the first time any of them have acted out—"

  "Second," Demont reminded her.

  She nodded, as if she were making mental calculations, tallying up the damage. "We should have deactivated him after the first time."

  "And it's only opening day," Allison said. "Do you expect the odds to improve over time, or get worse?"

  The inventor glowered at her. "I'm not a statistician."

  "And I'm not a gambler," Allison replied with a satisfied smile.

  The two women eyed each other for a moment. Ben wondered which would flinch first.

  "Okay, Garrote be damned," the inventor said finally. "You've made up my mind. I'm shutting Welles down." She crossed to a balding man who sat in front of a computer station. "Harrison, bring up the code for Morton Welles, please."

  The man looked up with uncertainty, the monitors reflecting off his smudged and dandruff-flecked glasses.

  "Well? Go on."

  "Mr. Garrote isn't gonna like that," he said, his voice nasal as if he had a cold.

  "Mr. Garrote doesn't have to like it. He's been dead nearly twenty years."

  Ben thought, Not according to Detective Beadle.

  The programmer—Harrison, she'd said—brought up the program. Under PASSWORD REQUIRED he banged out a flurry of keystrokes and hit Okay. The code appeared and he scrolled through lines filled with underscores and hashtags and parentheses and words Ben knew but couldn't understand in their current context. The man clicked a short-key that brought up a bar labeled BOOLEAN SEARCH. He typed "name = morton_welles + object code" and pressed Enter.

  More code appeared with "morton_welles" highlighted multiple times. The programmer scrolled again, paused at a line, then took off his glasses and rubbed them on his shirt. When he put them back on, he blinked hard at the screen. "That's not possible," he said.

  Sara Jane leaned over his shoulder. "What's not possible?"

  "The coding has changed." He pointed. "Here, this line should have an X but it's got an N. And this line should say 'type equals revenant' not 'type equals all.' This is bad, this is very, very—" He stood abruptly, scowling out at the rows of computers between himself and the monitor wall. "Has someone been tampering with the main system coding?"

  For a moment no one spoke, eyeing each other accusatorily like characters at the end of an old detective movie. Ben, who stood watching the computer over the programmer's shoulder, saw several characters in the middle of the screen changed. The programmer sat back down, fuming. "There!" he said, pointing at the changes Ben had already spotted. "Another line just changed! Who's logged into the system?"

  "There's only the five of us in here, Harrison," a young woman at one of the computers up front said. She wore a Pokémon T-shirt and had her short, dulled pink hair pulled up in a small ponytail at the top of her head.

  "Is it possible someone's using remote access?" Sara Jane asked.

  The programmer shook his head. "The coding isn't accessible outside of this room. Hedgewood made very specific demands—"

  "Not even to hackers?"

  "I'm telling you, unless it's one of us—" He stood and peered around the control center accusingly. The Pokémon fan shook her head in exasperation. "—this is just not possible, ma'am."

  "Everyone please, step away from your terminals," Sara Jane said, broadcasting her voice to fill the room. The handful of operators stood and reluctantly stepped away from their desks. Sara Jane turned back to Harrison. "Well?"

  The programmer took off his glasses and shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It's still changing. It's almost like—"

  "A virus," Ben said.

  "Like a virus," Harrison agreed, nodding.

  Sara Jane gave him a serious look. "Could it be?"

  "It's possible, sure. But to what end?"

  "Sabotage? One of our competitors? The GRP2 wackos?"

  Harrison slipped his glasses back on. "I suppose. I just don't see how anyone could have uploaded it without direct access codes, and only a handful of us have them."

  "Do we trust those people?"

  "With my life? Not likely. But with the source code…" He nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose again. "Yes, I believe everyone in possession of those access codes has only the project in mind. However it is this happened, we're gonna have to reboot the system to flush it."

  "How long would that take?"

  "Hours. Depends on how deep the virus has gotten and how malignant it—"

  Harrison launched out of his chair abruptly, causing Ben to leap out of his way and the chair to strike the desk behind him, where it toppled. "Shit!" the programmer gasped. He covered his mouth and stared fearfully at the screen.

  "I don't like the sound of that," Demont said.

  Harrison wagged a finger at the computer. "I knew I recognized that code. That right there—" He pointed at the screen in two separate places. "That's Rex Garrote's algorithm."

  Sara Jane frowned. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean Garrote's core algorithm has almost entirely copied over the algorithm for Morton Welles." He ran a hand through his sparse blond hair. "This isn't a virus, Miss Amblin." Jabbing a finger toward his terminal, he hissed, "That's Rex Garrote's AI."

  "Double shit," Sara Jane muttered. "How could this happen?"

  "Honestly, ma'am? I haven't got a clue. All I know is, we have to shut everything down before the Garrote code replicates throughout the entire system."

  "How dangerous could that be?"

  "With the Recurrence Field and the ESPs still up and running, I'd say not very. But I'm not one-hundred percent sure."

  The inventor nodded. "Best to be safe then." She reached for the intercom microphone nearby and twisted it toward her. "Attention, all patrons," she said, causing people on the security monitors to react in real-time. She released the Talk button and cleared her throat. "This is a general safety announcement. Exhibits will be shut down for a brief period due to routine computer maintenance. During this time, we ask that you please follow staff members to the exits in a calm and orderly fashion. Exhibits should r
esume shortly, however if you are unable to wait, the cost of your tickets will be refunded at the front gate. Thank you for your patience." She sighed heavily, releasing the mic. "That should buy us some time. If the three of you would like a refund or perhaps a gift certificate…"

  Allison said, "I just want to forget this day ever happened."

  Sara Jane nodded, again looking down at her clasped hands. "Okay. Shut it down, Harrison. You have one hour."

  "I need more time, ma'am."

  "One hour, Harrison."

  "All right. I'll do what I can." The programmer righted his chair and rolled it over to the terminal. As he began typing furiously, Sara Jane turned to Demont, her expression grave.

  "What the hell are we going to do in the meantime?" she asked. "Forty dollars a head. Those people out there will crucify us."

  Demont gave her a sympathetic look. "I could rally up the troops. Let them know there might be some angry people looking to cause trouble."

  "That would be great. Demont, was it?" He nodded. She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it lightly. "Thank you, Demont."

  With his ego visibly inflated, Demont headed for the door, where he turned back. "It was nice to meet you all," he said with a small wave in Ben and Lilian's direction.

  "You too," Lilian said. "Thank you."

  "My pleasure. Take care of yourself, Lilian. You too, Ben."

  "Thanks," Ben said.

  "We will," Lilian added.

  "Good luck with your schooling," Allison said with a wave. Demont thanked her and left. The door clanged shut, the lock engaged with a click and the seal hissed tight.

  "Should we…?" Allison hesitated. "Do you want us to go?"

  Sara Jane turned from watching over the programmer's shoulder and blinked, as if she'd already forgotten they were there. "Stay. By all means. You've seen the worst of it."

  They stood around for a few minutes, watching Sara Jane and Harrison work. Ben wanted to learn more about Ghostland, but Sara Jane hovered over the programmer's shoulder, pointing out lines of code and asking about them. Finally, she stepped back and let the programmer do his thing, which seemed to relieve Harrison, and Ben took the opportunity to fish.