AFK, In Pursuit of Avengement

AFK, IN PURSUIT OF AVENGEMENT

Also by Huckleberry Hax and set in Second Life速: AFK (2007) AFK, Again (2013) AFK, Indefinitely (2014) Be right back (2008) My Avatars and I (2009) Your clothing is still downloading (2012)

by Huckleberry H. Hax: Beside an Open Window (2014) The Day is Full of Birds (2008) The Introspection of Imogen Card (2011) Old friend, learn to look behind you in the coffee queue (poetry) (2010) Second Life is a Place We Visit (collected articles) (2015)

www.huckleberryhax.blogspot.com

AFK, IN PUSUIT OF AVENGEMENT

HUCKLEBERRY HAX

Copyright © 2015 by Huckleberry Hax All rights reserved This paperback edition published in 2015 Huckleberry Hax is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Published by www.lulu.com Cover photography: Huckleberry Hax Cover model and typography: Canary Beck The terms 'Second Life,' and 'Linden' are copyright © Linden Research Inc.

For Stosh.

1 The 3G signal was poor at street level, obstructed by four rows of concrete apartment blocks. I was connected to reflections. I’d reduced my draw distance down to 32 metres, but even so the streamed scene on my tablet periodically froze or dropped to a frame rate so low it might as well have been frozen. A man approached my car and I flipped quickly to Facebook, where a parade of cat images and mindless quotations about living life to the full begged for Likes and Shares. I Liked a picture of beagle in a bow tie. I elected to be part of the 99% of people who would not share a picture of a deceased war veteran. The man passed and I swiped my view back to Second Life and the inside view of Mica Borsec’s skybox.

Mica was arranging pink and blue pose balls above his bed. A stream of blood orange particles connected them to his outstretched hand as though he was commanding their presence from thin air. The skybox was a showcase of sculpted prim furniture from four years ago: a couch, a television, a kitchen with low lighting, a hot tub, a balcony, a view of New York at midnight. I could have been in a shop from those days when you actually had shops in SL. It was sterile. It was cold. It lacked meaningful clutter.

What Mica didn’t know was that I was just two blocks away from him in real life. If he’d looked out of his 9

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window he might just have been able to see me, sitting in the passenger seat (because that suggested there was probably a man nearby), my face lit by the glow of a virtual world in which his avatar was standing right next to mine.

Mica thought his luck was in tonight. In the next five minutes he’d be revising that opinion very extensively.

Pose balls arranged, he turned to face me. In a dragand-drop instant, his clothes were gone. No piece at a time; no emoted, urgent strip: one minute his leather pants and boots and black tank top were there, the next they had vanished. He invited me into a hug and I accepted.

Mica Borsec: baby you smell so good The words sneaked onto the bottom of my screen, little white pawns advancing things along a single, solitary, soulless square.

But then, Mica Borsec’s intended checkmate had nothing to do with romantic strategy.

Sarah Sonnet buries her face against your huge chest, marvelling that you manage to stay upright at such proportions.

Mica Borsec: hmm?

Sarah Sonnet: I mean, mmmm so nice.

Mica Borsec: yes baby Mica Borsec: take your clothes off for me Mica Borsec: not just in SL Mica Borsec: take them off in RL too Sarah Sonnet: Ok baby. I will.

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I contemplated another lengthy and privately sarcastic emote, but such compositions were tricky on the tablet keyboard and only satisfied my own vague pretensions to the art of my performance (though now that I was achieving an acclaim of sorts, I did occasionally fantasise about someone one day creating an unofficial biography about my exploits and drawing on my targets’ IM logs with me as source material, highlighting therein all my knowing winks at my future audience). Instead, I rolled down the window a few inches and lit a cigarette. Five minutes; possibly ten.

Sarah Sonnet: I took them off.

Mica Borsec: you are naked in real life?

Sarah Sonnet: Yes baby.

Mica Borsec: mmmm Mica Borsec: I like that Sarah Sonnet giggles.

Mica Borsec: baby…

Mica Borsec: I want to see you…

Mica Borsec: take a picture for me plz Sarah Sonnet: In real life?

Mica Borsec: plz baby yes Mica Borsec: just for me Mica Borsec: email to me Sarah Sonnet: I am shy.

Mica Borsec: don’t be shy baby Mica Borsec: do it for me Sarah Sonnet: Will you take one too? Just for me?

Mica Borsec: I will baby but I can’t now Mica Borsec: my phone is broken Mica Borsec: I buy a new one tomorrow 11

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Mica Borsec: then I will take a picture for you Mica Borsec: show you everything Sarah Sonnet: But, baby, don’t you have a camera on your laptop?

Mica Borsec: no laptop, baby Mica Borsec: I use desktop Mica Borsec: no webcam Sarah Sonnet: You asked me before if I used Skype.

Mica Borsec: you want to skype?

Mica Borsec: that would be nice Sarah Sonnet: But I wouldn’t see you if we Skyped?

Mica Borsec: no baby I don’t have webcam Mica Borsec: but I would like to see you Mica Borsec: see your face Mica Borsec: see you naked and beautiful Sarah Sonnet: But I am shy.

Mica Borsec: don’t be shy baby Mica Borsec: this is just for me Mica Borsec: you want me to see you I think Mica Borsec: do it baby Mica Borsec: let me see you Sarah Sonnet: Ok, baby.

Sarah Sonnet: Give me a minute to set up?

Mica Borsec: of course baby I threw what was left of the cigarette out of the window and rolled it back up. I got out of the car. I switched off the tablet screen and tucked it under my arm. I walked the two blocks to Mica’s apartment, my three inch heels puncturing the night’s silence at a frequency of exactly two hertz. I like my art.

I wondered if he’d hear me on the concrete steps as I 12

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ascended to the third floor. I hoped he would. I stopped outside his door, waited until ten seconds had passed and then rapped loudly five times on it.

I heard silence, then the sound of a chair being pushed back. A shadow fell across the peep hole.

The door opened, quickly. He was actually quite an attractive man. He was slim and muscular, he had a square jaw and delicate fingers. He was wearing a nearly open dressing gown.

“Hello, Mica,” I said. “My name is Thursday.” I pushed the Taser into his abdomen and sent him jerking to the ground.

Whilst he was out, I handcuffed him to the radiator pipe in the room with his laptop, on which his avatar still stood with mine, awaiting a real life feed to devour (the desktop he’d insisted on having was, of course, absent).

His screen capture software was loaded and ready; there was a ten second test clip already recorded in the top-left panel. I turned off the laptop, flipped it over, took a screwdriver out of my coat pocket and started undoing the case.

A thin voice from behind me asked, “What are you doing?” Mica shook his head slowly and eased himself into a sitting position.

“Removing your hard disk,” I replied. “I don’t have the time right now to wipe it properly.”

“To wipe it?”

“Yes, Mica. To erase the collection of real life pictures and videos you’ve conned and extorted out of your victims.”

“Victims?” he repeated.

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Slowly, I span round in the chair to face him. “Do you remember a woman called Spring Greenhill? You met her in Second Life about three months ago.”

“I meet a lot of women there,” he replied.

“Indeed you do. You seduce them with your scripted clichés and beg them for real life photographs or a Skype feed you can record, and when they comply you then upload what you get to revenge porn websites so you can ridicule their bodies and their character.”

He shrugged.

I turned back to the laptop. “In fact, Spring was a primary school teacher. She was in her forties and single. She’d been married for a while, but then her husband left her for a younger woman and Spring found – her real name was Elizabeth, by the way – Elizabeth found that her desire to be loved was not matched by her ability or energy to seek out a new partner. It left her feeling empty, but it wasn’t an emptiness she was unable to deal with. Men’s emptiness gets filled up with private rage, Mica, but women on the whole just learn to live with feeling empty.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked. “Why should I care?”

“It doesn’t matter to me whether you care or not,” I replied, taking out the last screw, “but it is important that you know why this is happening.

“Spring – Elizabeth – is dead, by the way. She killed herself after someone pointed out to her the video recording you made and posted. Her parents are paying for my time right now.”

There was a short silence whilst I prised open the casing. Then he asked, “How did she kill herself?” I 14

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could hear barely suppressed relish in his words.

“Sleeping tablets, Mica. No drama. Nothing for you to fantasise over.”

Then, the information I’d just given him appeared to sink in. “You are being paid for this?” he asked. “You are… a professional?”

I turned to face him again and watched him mouth silently my name. He was frowning. Suddenly, his eyes opened wide.”

“Ah,” I said, with satisfaction, “so you have heard of me.”

He pulled urgently on the handcuffs. “Please. You must not-“ “Calm yourself, Mica,” I told him.

“I will pay you.”

“I’m already being paid.”

“I will pay you more.”

“Even if that were possible – which I really doubt – I wouldn’t want any money that had spent time in your wallet.”

I pulled out the hard drive and put it in the pocket of my greatcoat. “How do you back-up? Sticks? Disks?

External drive?”

“External drive.” The voice was a helpless whisper.

“The second drawer.”

“Excellent, Mica.” I found it straight away, a walletsized plastic box of two terabytes. There was a whole bunch of USB sticks scattered around in there; I took them as well.

“My data,” he said.

“What of it?”

“Things from work. Family pictures.”

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“Mine now,” I told him. I took his phone too.

He rattled the cuffs again. “Bitch.”

I stood up and took a step towards him. Immediately, he shrank back into the wall. “Now we get to the interesting part of the evening, Mica.” I held out my camera for him to see. “As I think you already know, I’m going to take some pictures of you. Some of these I’ll publish straight away; some I’ll keep back for if you do things in the future that I feel you should be punished for.”

His eyes darted around the room, looking for a magical tool. “You think I will just pose for you?”

“It’s funny you should say that,” I told him, untying my belt. “People do wonder if I somehow stage or manipulate my images, but the truth is I hardly ever need to do anything to them. My subjects always end up ridiculously willing.

“I’d love to meet a man who is actually a challenge, Mica; someone who thinks a little further ahead than four inches into the future.” I hooked open his gown with the heel of my right boot. “Three inches,” I corrected myself.

“I won’t co-operate,” he said.

“I won’t force you to do anything,” I promised him.

“That’s the beauty of it. It wouldn’t be art if I did.

Maybe you’ll succeed, Mica; maybe you’ll be that man that defies me.”

I unbuttoned and opened my greatcoat.

Pretty quickly it was clear that he wouldn’t be.

I left the apartment a little less than an hour after I’d entered it. I lit another cigarette on the walk back to my 16

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car. I pulled out my phone.

“All done, Thursday?” he asked.

“All done,” I replied.

“Any problems?”

“Nope. It was easy.”

“Good. When can you get the pictures uploaded?”

“Depends on the hotel connection. Give me thirty minutes. Maybe forty.”

“I’ll send out the tweets, then.”

“You do that, Stransky,” I told him.

17

2 Step Stransky. The man I thought I’d killed. The man I had killed, only it turned out I’d not done quite as complete a job as I thought I had.

I first met Stransky at a charity event in SL, a lagged out shuffle of avatars gathered for the cause of some library somewhere. I have no idea why I was there, nor indeed why I stayed for more than about five minutes, but in those days you tended to tolerate that sort of thing. It was 2005. Second Life was still new and fresh, and being a pioneer was part of your identity as a resident back then.

So you put up with clunky environments of angular, low-prim furniture and you dealt with being rooted to the spot and unable to move due to lag half the time, and you did this because the fact that you were there in the first place was amazing, all by itself. In any case, everyone back then believed it would all improve soon enough. It wasn’t even a fantasy, because it did. These days, though, everyone’s so angry with everything that the improvements go unnoticed.

Stransky and I were the two guys at the bar without dance partners. I think I was camming around when he first spoke to me, probably examining an avatar I wouldn’t these days look twice at (other than to marvel at the fact that there really are still people about who think flexi-prim clothing makes them look good). Back 18

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then, I’d have been wearing a charcoal grey suit that looked like it had been painted onto me by a preschooler, but as far as I was concerned I was the sharpest pin in the venue.

Step Stransky: Thursday… is that a Scottish name?

Definitely Thursday: I believe so.

Definitely Thursday: One only has to say the word in a strong Scottish accent to know that it belongs there.

Step Stransky: Exactly what I was thinking.

Step Stransky: It’s a strong word. It has a burr all of its own.

Step Stransky: And – you’re quite right – it’s very… definite.

Definitely Thursday: Say my *full* name in a Scottish accent, however, and you’ll hear something slightly different.

Step Stransky: Hmm. Step Stransky: I don’t know about you, but I’m hearing alcohol.

Definitely Thursday: Exactly.

Step Stransky: I can actually picture the stereotyped facial movements that would accompany those two words.

Definitely Thursday: Do you see a pointed finger?

Step Stransky: I do! I do see a pointed finger!

Definitely Thursday: Pointing upwards, yes?

Step Stransky: Right again.

Definitely Thursday: Doing a little circle in the air thing.

Step Stransky: I can see you’ve put a lot of thought into this.

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Definitely Thursday: You won’t believe this, but absolutely none of this even occurred to me until you brought the subject up.

Step Stransky: That’s amazing.

Definitely Thursday: I know, right?

Step Stransky: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Art creates itself.

Definitely Thursday: Wow. Profound.

Definitely Thursday: Just out of interest, when *did* you say it before?

Step Stransky: Funnily enough, about 27 minutes ago.

Step Stransky: According to my chat log.

Step Stransky: To a brunette I met at an art event just before I came here.

Step Stransky: I was saying how SL resembles the paintings of L S Lowry.

Step Stransky: Sadly, she wasn’t convinced.

Step Stransky: Even the beautiful serendipity of his initials didn’t help.

Definitely Thursday: Hence, I guess, you being here.

Step Stransky: Well actually, I know the DJ here.

Step Stransky: Though he would have understood if I’d had to cancel.

Definitely Thursday: You have a place of your own in SL? Step Stransky: You mean, do I have somewhere I could have taken her for sex? A little forward, considering I’ve known you for all of fifteen minutes, but yes.

Step Stransky: Well, actually, no.

Step Stransky: I have a place, but it’s not, shall we say, ‘equipped’.

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Definitely Thursday: I’ve found that forward works in here.

Definitely Thursday: Let’s face it, the graphics aren’t exactly exhilarating.

Definitely Thursday: You might as well be bold in text.

Step Stransky: I couldn’t agree more.

Definitely Thursday: So where would you have taken her if not your place?

Step Stransky: You’re assuming a lot about my intentions!

Definitely Thursday: I’m assuming nothing, buddy.

Definitely Thursday: All I did was conversationally ask if you had a place of your own; you’re the one who brought up sex in a way you think enabled you to project your dirty mind onto me without my noticing.

Step Stransky laughs.

Step Stransky: Clever.

Step Stransky: Is that how you bed women in SL? By making them think it’s their idea?

Definitely Thursday: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Definitely Thursday: Please don’t say you’d have taken her to one of those dreadful sex halls.

Step Stransky: Can we get off this subject?

Step Stransky: Shouldn’t we be talking about this library we’re here to support?

Definitely Thursday: Actually, I think they did just accumulate enough to buy a whole new book.

Definitely Thursday: The next target is to purchase the hardback version.

Step Stransky: lol Step Stransky: You just gave yourself away as British, 21

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by the way.

Definitely Thursday: Oh? Step Stransky: ‘Hardback’ instead of ‘Hardcover’.

Definitely Thursday: Ah. Definitely Thursday: And you just gave yourself away as a detail watcher.

Step Stransky: Yep. Step Stransky: Of sorts.

Stransky didn’t out himself as a Second Life private detective until the fourth time we met, and he did so then only to ask me to join his agency. Right before he made me this offer, we had a long chat about the concept of romantic partnership in SL. Definitely Thursday: It has occurred to me that the whole SL partnership thing might be a sort of 'plot device' from Linden's point of view.

Step Stransky: A what?

Definitely Thursday: A plot device. Something that adds plot.

Step Stransky: Okaaaaay...

Definitely Thursday: The two main objectives of Linden from a business survival point of view must be 1) get people here, and 2) keep people here. Right?

Step Stransky: Ok. And? Definitely Thursday: And. You come here in the first place out of curiosity, but you stay for the relationships you discover you can have.

Definitely Thursday: Without partnering there'd be no structure to that. No format. So it'd be less likely that you'd discover it.

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Definitely Thursday: People would have had to think 'out of the box' with respect to relationships... But people are generally very bad at that.

Definitely Thursday: Why have bran flakes when you can eat anything? Because you understand bran flakes.

Because they don't scare you.

Definitely Thursday: 'Partnering' is the imposition of an RL structure where it's not actually needed.

Definitely Thursday: It's only purpose can be to make the virtual world make better sense to the numbers of people Linden need to attract if SL is going to succeed financially.

Definitely Thursday: I mean you can't steal things here.

You can't kill people. People can't get sick. Where's the drama? Where are the storylines?

Definitely Thursday: People need storylines.

Step Stransky: I see. Hence 'plot device.' Right.

Step Stransky: The soapification of Second Life, then?

Definitely Thursday: Right! Exactly!

Step Stransky: In fairness, if Linden hadn't included partnering in the first place I suspect the residents would probably have demanded it anyway.

Step Stransky: And either Linden would have given in or the residents would have found some unofficial way of doing it amongst themselves.

Step Stransky: One way or another we would still have had partnering.

For some reason – perhaps because the utter flimsiness of SL partnerships were the very bread and butter of our subsequent business together – I assumed that Stransky wasn’t the partnering type. He was that odd mix of 23

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detached, compassionate, clinical, philosophical, often brilliantly clever and frequently ridiculously absentminded. I couldn’t imagine him for one moment in an actual relationship.

Oh, how wrong I was. Months later, he took from me in a single night’s worth of acquaintance a woman I truly thought was the love of my life.

Step Stransky: Guess what?

Definitely Thursday: I don't know.

Definitely Thursday: You're really a woman?

Step Stransky: lol Step Stransky: Nope.

Definitely Thursday: Well that's me fresh out of ideas!

Step Stransky: You know that girl last night – Inch?

Definitely Thursday: Yes? Definitely Thursday: After you left, I proposed to her!

Definitely Thursday: You did what?

Step Stransky: I proposed to Inch last night! Isn't that crazy??!!

I remember the sheer horror of that moment. It was like I'd been shot, fatally, through the heart. It was like I'd put my hand over the hole in my chest and was now inspecting the blood on my fingers, incomprehension etched across my face as I staggered back a step. I was at the time enraptured, obsessed, infatuated with Inch Sideways, possessed by an overwhelming love that pervaded every tiny little bit of me. She was everywhere my thoughts would care to look. Everywhere. The first thought I had when Stransky told me this news was disbelief. I had to check his profile to see if he was telling 24

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the truth and, when I saw her name in it, it was all I could do to make it to the sink, where I threw up, violently.

Definitely Thursday: Let me get this straight...

Definitely Thursday: You asked Inch Sideways to become your SL partner...

Definitely Thursday: ...and she accepted?

Step Stransky: Yes! Am I crazy or what??!!

Definitely Thursday: You're lying.

Step Stransky: lol Step Stransky: Stupendous, isn't it?!

Definitely Thursday: But you don't agree with partnership.

Definitely Thursday: An unessential RL system imposed on SL, remember?

Step Stransky: Well...

Step Stransky: Strictly speaking...

Step Stransky: That was your theory, not mine :)) Definitely Thursday: You *said* you didn't understand why people partner.

Step Stransky: Come on Def...

Step Stransky: You saw what she was like...

Step Stransky: She's *amazing*!

Step Stransky: People like that in SL are never!

Step Stransky: You don't let someone like her slip through your fingers.

Even now, my hands make fists all by themselves when I think about that moment. A few months later, I tracked that bastard down in real life and I killed him. I took him to the edge of orgasm and then I pushed a pillow 25

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into his face with all the might I could find within me until his kicking and his flailing and his heartbeat stopped. But not before I let him know who I was: “I wanted to tell you something, Pops,” I said, picking up the pillow and tossing it up and down playfully whilst he panted on the bed in front of me. “Thursday is Definitely a Sideways Step.”

It was a code we’d agreed in SL between us: me, Inch and Stransky; an amalgamation of all of our names.

Only the three of us knew it. When I spoke those words, incomprehension flooded Stransky’s face, then recognition, then confusion; then, all at once, a smile.

“Inch?” he asked.

You see, he thought I was a guy in RL. He thought Inch was the only woman in our cosy little trio.

“Wrong guess,” I told him, and pushed the pillow down. I remember very clearly the millisecond pause and then his hands clutching suddenly at my forearms and his nails digging furrows in my skin. I watched his body tense and jerk, as confusion transitioned to fear and fear transitioned to mindless panic. I watched his conscious, rational, purposeful mind drain out of his movement, never to return.

And, even now, I get goose bumps all over me when I think about that moment.

Not because I’m glad I killed him – I’m not; it was the most insane, the most stupid, the most evil thing I’ve ever done and now, where once it was thoughts of Inch that were imprinted across every neural pathway I own, the knowledge that I ended another person’s life now haunts me on a moment-by-moment basis. But love fades and I will always – always – be a murderer.

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I get goose bumps because watching Step Stransky die was one of the most shocking, intimate, intensely beautiful things I’ve ever witnessed.

So you can imagine my surprise when, five years later, I found out he was still alive. Or – to be more accurate about it – that a part of him was.

Don’t go thinking I didn’t actually kill the man; that he survived; that a local hero resuscitated him or brought him back to life with some state-of-the-art defibrillator or other bullshit magic wand. John-Paul Barnaby, the retired social worker I discovered to be the driver behind Stransky’s avatar, definitely did die with his pillow pushed into his face and my knee pressed into his chest, and his body definitely was burned out of all recognition by the fire I started subsequently in his flat. The verdict of accidental death was recorded in the papers the following week and, years later, when Inch Sideways herself worked out what I’d done and entrapped me, it was as a suspected murderer that I was described in the headlines about my last minute escape from the hotel in Portsmouth where she coerced my confession out of me.

John-Paul Barnaby died.

But the man on the South Bank of the Thames I’d a few weeks later arranged to meet to buy a passport from used the very same code on me that I’d used on Barnaby just before I kicked him into the next world: “Let me see now,” he said; “Oh yes: Thursday is Definitely a Sideways Step. That’s the right phrase, isn’t it?”

Then he opened his arms and said, “Come here. Give your old buddy Step Stransky a hug.”

27

3 It was a sunny, late September day in London. 2012.

Almost two years before my encounter with Mica. The hugeness of my moment went completely unnoticed by the flow of people around us. But then that’s London. A million stories at least mix and move together there anonymously every single day.

“Who are you?” I asked him, keeping my distance.

“Didn’t you hear me?” the man replied. “I’m Step Stransky. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about me, Def.” “Step Stransky,” I told him, “is dead.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Perhaps you should reconsider.”

I moved a little closer, but still kept just out of his arms’ reach. “I don’t need to reconsider.” I lowered my voice. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

“And felt it with you own hands, yes?”

I looked briefly around me. Were there police nearby?

Was this a set-up? Was he playing for time? I had just turned down his transaction: I’d arranged to meet this man to buy a passport and he’d attempted to screw me over with an out-of-date Polish issue I couldn’t have used. I’d started walking away from him immediately.

Did he need to pad things out? Was he improvising?

As though guessing my thoughts, he told me, “Don’t 28

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worry, Def; no-one’s watching. No-one’s listening. It’s just you and me, and the solitude of the crowd.”

“What do you want?” I asked him.

He smiled. “To catch up. To chat. Maybe there’s something you can do for me.”

“I’m not in the business of favours right now.”

“Not even for your old buddy?”

“You are not Step Stransky.”

“You don’t believe me? Didn’t I use the right code?”

“I suppose he must have told you it. Or you hacked his computer and read his message logs. Or perhaps you’re an ex-cop who worked on the case and you just printed the whole thing out.”

He tutted and wagged a finger. “That’s sloppy reasoning. It’s only a few weeks ago that the murder angle broke. It’s hardly all that likely that I’m an ex-cop in that short amount of time.” He looked suddenly thoughtful. “Unless, of course, I got fired for the incompetence that led to you getting away. I suppose that’s possible.”

“A bent cop, then,” I said.

“If you’re going to be exhaustive in your consideration of explanations, include at least for the sake of completeness the possibility I might be just a decent cop in the market for your skills.”

“A good detective starts with likelihood,” I responded, “not just any old logically possible thing.”

The man smiled. “Indeed she does. Indeed she does.”

He rubbed his chin for a moment. “Where were we when I first told you that? I have this memory of open plains. The Africa sim, I believe. Was that the case of the guy with the lion alt? We had a right old debate about 29

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the ethics of that. Does an adult lion having sex with a lion cub constitute child pornography? Ah, the good old days.”

“So you read the logs,” I said. “Big deal.”

“As it happens, you’re not completely wrong.” For the first time, he took his eyes off me and looked up and down the esplanade. “Why don’t we get a coffee? I’ll explain it all to you.”

“What’s wrong with right here?”

“The lack of latte,” he replied. Without waiting for my consent, he added, “How about the Royal Festival Hall?”

“Only if we take the terrace.”

“Well of course,” he replied. “Who’d sit indoors on a day like this?”

“Spoken like a true metaverse resident,” I commented.

It was meant to be sarcasm, but he took it at face value and remarked conversationally, “I think so too. Ever since they introduced shadows to SL I’ve had a bit of a thing about sunshine and light.” We started walking.

He chuckled. “The metaverse is evolving. It’s not the same place you and I roamed around in all that time ago.”

“The metaverse is dying,” I replied.

“You mean Second Life? Perhaps it is. But death’s an integral part of evolution. Second Life was only ever going to be the first tentative steps upon dry land.”

We passed a living statue. I watched a chid drop a coin into a hat. “All those things people made and bought, though,” I commented. “All that effort. Soon it’ll all be gone.”

“None of it was ever really theirs in the first place.”

“Is that how it is from now on? Everything that passes 30

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through our hands is only rented?”

He ran his fingertips lightly over the surface of the wall to his left. “Was it ever any other way? You can’t take anything with you at the end, can you? Ownership always was an illusion.”

“But at least what you had in the real world remained once you were gone. At least you left footprints. Once SL shuts down it’ll be a vanished world. Parts of it are vanished already. There is literally nothing left of some places.”

“There are photographs.”

“Stored these days in the cloud on a server that will one day stop working.”

“Files can be copied,” he said.

“Only whilst the company that manages them still exists.”

“As I seem to recall,” he mused, “you were quite fond of that little green alien place that’s now gone. What was it called again?”

“The Greenies,” I replied. And that thought triggered an idea. “If you really are Step Stransky, perhaps you’ll remember the times we were together there.” Some things you couldn’t learn from logs.

“I recall a couple of occasions,” he said. “Once was just a visit. Another time we were tracking a guy.”

“His name was Bykler. We followed him there, hoping we’d catch him out with the mistress his partner suspected he had.”

“I still use from time to time that tracker script you wrote to put in watches,” he commented. “The watches are mesh now, of course, but the script works just as well as it ever did.” We’d give a copy of the watch to our 31

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client, who’d then present it to her partner as a gift. For the female targets, I’d also created a small range of rings, the code inserted into a non-modifiable script innocently titled ‘bling’. It would report back to us the wearer’s location and echo anything typed in chat. The good old days, indeed. And this was a conveniently tangential conversational thread.

“What did they do?” I asked him.

He smiled at me. “I see what you’re doing. We wouldn’t have described to each other in our IM what they were up to since we could both see it – so if I was just someone who’d only read the logs of our conversations I wouldn’t have that knowledge.”

“Enough with the analysis,” I told him. “Just answer the question.”

“They flew around in that giant lounge.” He waved his hand in a big circle.

“Everyone used to fly around there.”

“They posed for photographs with the greenies.”

“Again, as did everyone.”

“When they came to the cat, his date remarked that it looked just like her cat had looked in real life and she found a pose in her inventory that enabled her to put her arms around its neck and hug it.”

I frowned. In fact, I’d forgotten all about that moment and had been thinking about an interaction at the giant Coke bottle, but now that he mentioned the cat the memory of that hug came back to me.

“I promise you,” he said, “that I was there.”

I shook my head. “That’s not possible. I can’t think how you could know that, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way.”

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“I do miss those days,” he continued, unperturbed.

“Things were so much simpler then.”

I shrugged. “I used to think it all had such meaning, all that so-called SL detective work. What could be more fundamental than affairs of the heart, and affairs at that which had no basis beyond pure mental affinity? Even all the vacuous, clichéd interactions were still basically people writing love-letters in their own way to each other. It felt profound somehow. I used to think it was the start of a new era.”

“But not any more?”

“What was I actually doing?” I asked. “Spying on people who’d never actually met each other in RL and who were typing sex words into box A instead of box B. Nothing, really, when you get down to it. Nothing at all.

In some respects, shaking hands with someone in real life is a far more actually intimate thing.”

“Oh,” he said. “I must say, I vastly prefer your original take on it all.”

“Pure naivety,” I stated. “How can we really know each other in the metaverse?”

“How can we really know anyone anywhere?” he replied.

There didn’t seem to be any answer to that other than to agree, and I didn’t especially want to submit any sort of agreement to this man just yet. So we walked in silence for a few more steps. Then he said, “I remember coming to London as a boy with my father. We used to walk this exact route. Do you remember how dirty it used to be here? Do you remember the litter, how it used to blow around in circles?”

“It was the same everywhere in my memory.”

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“And everything is so much cleaner now. No small feat for a city as big as London. But you know, Def, it’s all still here. The litter. Only now it’s invisible.”

“What do you mean?”

With his finger and thumb a millimetre apart, he made as though to pick a particle from the air. “Here is a man showing off his new car.” He blew on it and opened his hand. “Here is a woman declaring her love for her children. Here is a statement of support for our armed forces, posted by a right-wing nationalist group. Here is a cat misjudging badly a jump to the top of the kitchen cupboard.” He took a deep breath of South Bank air, drawing into his lungs a million social commentaries.

“We’re becoming digital beings. We’re living our lives through data.”

“Meaningless data,” I said. “Data that will one day be deleted.”

“Buildings get knocked down in real life. Possessions get lost. Books get burned. Is it really all so different?

Are we not just simply transitioning from one medium to another?”

“But not all of it gets destroyed. Artefacts remain.” A thought passed through my mind. “Are you here on behalf of Fred?” I asked him.

“Fred?” he replied.

“Someone I did some work for recently.”

He looked curious. “Interesting. I’m afraid I’ve no idea who you’re talking about.”

“Never mind.”

“As you wish. I might ask questions later, though.”

“They won’t get answered.”

We climbed steps. “So what is next?” I asked him. “If 34

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SL is only the first thing then what will follow?

InWorldz? Open Sim?” He waved these words away. “Distractions, Def; surely you understand that. Niches within a niche.

Bigger things await us on the horizon.”

“Like what?”

“I have no idea, except that afterwards we’ll look back on today and not recognise ourselves.”

“Isn’t that what people used to say about Second Life?”

“But weren’t they right? Are you the same person that you used to be?”

I didn’t answer because I still didn’t want to be agreeing with this man. But the truthful reply would have been, ‘not even remotely’.

In any case, we had arrived at the Riverside Terrace Café at the Royal Festival Hall. Now it was time for some answers.

“It’s really very simple,” he began, his latte a third depleted. “John-Paul and I shared the Step Stransky account.”

“What?” I said.

“The possibility shouldn’t surprise you. You and I talked about it on several occasions. We outed two – well, four – guys who were doing it.”

Yes. The details came back to me. Two very distinct cases. Both had been a couple of real life friends sharing an account, but the motives had been completely different. The first had involved an extrovert guy setting up encounters for his introvert best friend who was a forty-something virgin in real life. The second had been 35

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an altogether more devious affair and much harder to crack: two guys who lived off the thrill of fucking someone who thought that they were somebody else.

“You,” I said, “shared the Stransky account?”

“I did,” the man replied. “Actually, it was on average more me who you interacted with than him.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why not? Is it so inconceivable?”

I shrugged. This was a no-brainer. “I’d have known.

You’d have given yourself away somehow.”

“In fact, JP and I gave ourselves away – in small ways – on many occasions, but you never caught on. We only had to be consistent enough to maintain the illusion of one person – the rest didn’t matter. In the end, you wrote off me or him not knowing about something the other had said or done as Step Stransky’s adorable absent-mindedness. The small inconsistencies became a big consistency.”

“No,” I said. “It’s too large a lie. I don’t believe you.”

“This coming from the person who had us all thinking you were a man. We accept the reality we’re confronted with, do we not? Small anomalies we invent reasons for.”

I shook my head. “Me pretending to be a man was just a matter of remaining in role. Secretly sharing an account is an immensely more complicated deception.

How could you possibly have kept up to date with each other’s activity sufficiently well enough to present as one person?”

“It consumed time, I don’t deny it; but it was hardly complex. We just read up on each other’s logs. Simple.”

“You shared a computer?”

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“We didn’t live together, if that’s what you mean. We file-shared our IM and chat logs. You know Dropbox, right?”

“Yes.” “So we used an early version of that exact concept.

We each of us set the shared folder on our computers as the place where our logs got saved and the automatic synchronisation took care of everything for us.”

“You dropboxed your IM logs?”

“Effectively, yes.

Dropbox itself wasn’t actually around back then, of course, but it was basically the same deal. Whenever either of us was on as Step, both of our folders got updated. We were each of us always bang up-to-date on whatever the avatar had been up to. So long as we took the time to read the files, of course.”

I scowled at the inconveniently workable explanation.

“Why on Earth would anyone want to do such a thing?”

“At first it was an experiment. You remember the old days of SL, right? Everything then was possibilities. JP and I were just a couple of regular avatars who happened to share the same infohub as a home spot, and we became friends. We used to talk a lot about all the logical possibilities of SL and, of course, this theme led us eventually to the idea of account sharing. We decided to give it a go – initially just to see if it was technically possible and then to see if we could fool our other friends at the infohub into thinking we were one person.

“And it was actually our success at this that gave birth to the idea of creating a detective agency. In pulling off the deception, we came across all the little ways in which it could have fallen apart – all the little signs that someone who knew what to look for might be able to 37

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identify as the giveaway traits of a shared account.”

“Like the greeting,” I said.

“Exactly. One person says, ‘Hi’ with a capital H but the other says ‘hey’ all in lower-case letters. Or the smiley: one person uses a dash between the colon and close bracket to indicate a nose; the other omits it. A hundred little tell-tale footprints for the detective to look for. Once we got talking about a person playing the detective role in SL we conjured up all sorts of other scenarios such a person might look into. Cheating partners was the obvious one, but what about the partner who cheats through an alt? What about players who are virtual bigamists? What about players who use SL to carry out actual crimes, such as long cons? Well, you know the sort of work we ended up doing.”

“I do,” I said, feeling my resistance start to crumble. A gnawing sense of apprehension began to grow within me.

“At first, ‘Cheaters Exposed’ – that was what we were going to call ourselves – was to be one of us as Step and the other a business partner, but we were so into the idea of account sharing that we pretty soon discarded this idea. Account sharing would give the impression of one passionate expert rather than that of two people whose relationship and commitment were unknowable to the potential client. Thus, the ‘Step Stransky Detective Agency’ was born. More practically, we neither of us wanted to dedicate our whole SL time to investigation and sharing would enable each of us to go off and do other things in the metaverse whilst the other was working. Over time, of course, this evolved: by the time we hired you – which we did because the workload had 38

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become too great for even the two of us to manage, and by then the agency’s reputation was solid enough to stand by itself – we’d grown into two distinct roles: JP was best at the talking and listening to clients stuff, and spent most of his Stransky time picking up new work and getting as much case information as possible; my strengths lay more in the fieldwork side of things and so I spent most of my time out and about working from JP’s notes. Naturally, as the workload grew, we also started to use alts so that we could both be on and working at the same time.”

He paused, perhaps leaving me the opening for the question we both knew I would eventually have to ask. I took it. “So,” I said, “what about Inch?” It wasn’t the first time I’d said aloud her name to another person, but it was the first time I’d said it to a person I knew knew who I was talking about.

He grimaced, everso slightly. “She didn’t know. I suppose the next question is whether or not JP and I shared her. Don’t worry: Inch was all him. It’s not like we were monsters. By the time he met her, he and I had been drifting towards different directions for some time.

It was my desire to grow the agency and find new forms of work – perhaps even to move into real life work when an SL case required it: but JP was dead-set against all that. I loved – still love – metaverse investigation and wanted to make it my career, but JP found it more of an entertaining distraction, a role within SL – an identity; a root – that helped him to immerse and enjoy it all that much better. As you know, he was retired in RL; he wasn’t interested in building anything into a future. In the weeks leading up to him meeting Inch, we had a 39

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number of disagreements about the whole thing and I ended up starting up my own agency on the side. When I told him about this it was a shock to him and I think he started to realise then just how much I wanted something bigger; he even started talking about the possibility of him stepping down from Stransky one day so he wasn’t an obstacle to me.

“But then he met Inch Sideways.”

“And then he wanted to be Stransky all the time,” I guessed.

“Right. Everything changed at that point. It all happened so fast. Suddenly he was in love with this woman I’d never heard of and he couldn’t bear the thought of me being with her in the Stransky account. It wasn’t at all that he was jealous, of course – as I’m sure you were aware, theirs was an open relationship moreor-less from the start – it was just that it made him feel sick to think he was deceiving her. I was in so many words forbidden from communicating with her at any level more complex than responding politely to any IMs she sent me, and I was to close even those interactions down as quickly as possible with an ‘I’m busy’ comment.

Actually, the number of times I had to do that weren’t all that many: once he became familiar with her usual SL hours he’d log himself on as Step at the earliest opportunity – sometimes hours before she came on – in order to prevent me from having access to the account during that time. At first, I figured he’d eventually tell her about the arrangement and I tolerated it as a shortterm inconvenience – after all, I was still perfectly able to carry out my work using an alt. But once the wedding was out of the way and then several weeks had passed 40

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and he still hadn’t done this, I realised that actually he had no intention of doing this at all and what he really wanted was to have the Stransky account to himself.

Basically, he didn’t want to have to tell her ever, and he’d never have any reason to if I was no longer a codriver.”

He swirled his glass a few times. “Of course, the easiest thing,” he said, “would have been for him to change the account’s password.”

I looked at him over the top of my own cup. “But you had leverage.”

“Exactly. He knew that if he pissed me off I could just copy and paste the contents of his personal logs into a notecard and send if off to Inch as evidence of his deception. In theory. We never spoke of this possibility, you understand, but that was hardly necessary for a couple of private investigators; neither of us was so stupid to think the idea hadn’t occurred to the other. It was an unspoken blackmail.”

“And you continued to have access to his IM logs?”

“Of course I did, by virtue of the exact same argument I just outlined. If he’d moved his log files out of his shared folder I would have known it instantly. More to the point, the file sharing arrangement was an integral part of the account share; denying me access to the logs would have been just as terminal a move to the arrangement as changing the avatar password.”

“But by that stage,” I countered, “it sounds like you were more or less leading separate lives in SL anyway: what he got up to as Step was of little or no relevance to what you got up to. You no longer needed to know the log contents.”

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“That’s where you’re wrong,” he replied. “I told you JP came on for hours sometimes before Inch logged in; well, he had to do something with that time. Suddenly, his actual work as Stransky the investigator was on the up again and he was reinvested in the business.”

A thought formed in my mind and wouldn’t depart.

This man had knowledge of all that had passed between Inch and Step Stransky. “Did she ever talk about me?” I asked him. I realised as I spoke that this question was also an acknowledgement that I believed his story.

“What?” He looked derailed from telling his story.

“Inch,” I said. “Did she ever talk about me?”

“Oh.” The man – I still didn’t know his name – paused. “In what context?” he asked eventually.

The pause was enough, for now. “It doesn’t matter.” I shook the thought away, angrily. Still now, after all this time, after everything that had happened, her name had an effect on me. I changed the subject quickly. “So how did you know he was dead? John-Paul, I mean. When he died. Why didn’t you log on as Stransky the next day? Why didn’t you log on as Stransky, for that matter, the night that I was with him?”

“I didn’t know he was dead until his daughter emailed me,” he replied. “JP had given her a list of people to message in case he ever died.”

“Which didn’t include me,” I noted.

“Ok,” he said. “Though, in fairness, since you did end up murdering him, perhaps his evaluation of your relationship wasn’t all that inaccurate.”

I smiled thinly at him. “I guess you have a point.”

“To answer your question, I didn’t log on as Stransky because I’d met someone in one of my alts. I hadn’t 42

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logged on as him for at least a week before you killed JP. I was spending all my time with her. For once, I just wasn’t interested in being the detective.”

“The bliss of new love.”

“Indeed. A very fortunate bliss for me.”

“How so?”

“You haven’t yet thought this through,” he said.

Imagine what would have happened if I’d logged on as Stransky in ignorance of everything that had happened once Inch knew JP was dead. What would I have said to her?”

I shrugged. “I get that your secret would have been out. But what would you have cared? You weren’t the one in love with her.”

“At least acknowledge the possibility that I didn’t want to ruin her memory of JP, as much for his sake as for hers.”

Then I realised, though it still didn’t make a great deal of sense. “Ah,” I said. “I see. You think suspicion might have fallen on you?”

“To be honest,” he replied, “I was scared shitless until the verdict of accidental death was announced. I knew that if the police thought to look at JP’s online activity and came across his second life they might contact Linden for information and then discover that Step Stransky appeared to be logging on from two very different locations in the UK. Fortunately – for you as well, as it turned out – that never occurred to them and they went with the simplest explanation. But, if I had blundered online without knowing he was dead, Inch would almost certainly have alerted them to suspected foul play. Just imagine it: me coming inworld and 43

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responding to Inch’s astonished IM as though nothing had happened; don’t you think that would look just a little bit like I’d killed him and hoped to take up the story where he’d left off?”

“But what would they have discovered if they’d investigated?” I asked. “Once they’d paired off IMs with IPs, they’d have known you weren’t personally involved with Inch.”

“Sure, they’d have seen I had no contact with her as Step, but they’d have known I had access to all of JP’s interactions with her. They might have hypothesised I was jealous and secretly coveting the relationship.”

I looked at him through narrow eyes. “Unless you’re just extremely paranoid,” I said, “that doesn’t seem enough. There’s something you’re not telling me.” I thought back over his last few words and then I had it.

“You had no contact with her as Step?”

He shifted in his seat, uncomfortably. “Ok. There was one time. Only one. I was logged in late at night as one of my alts, following a lead in a case that led me to a club. And there she was, leaning against the bar in a little black dress.”

Leaning against a bar in a little black dress. Instantly, I was taken back to the moment of my own first meeting with her, and the opening words she’d sent me that had initiated one of my most intense evenings ever in the metaverse: Inch Sideways has been watching Definitely Thursday from across the dance floor for several minutes now. She's wondering if he's always so still and so silent. She's wondering if he's here to watch or to wish. She's wondering 44

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what it is that happens on a Thursday, and what it is that makes it so... definite.

I tried to shake the memory from my mind, reminded myself that I now hated Inch Sideways, reminded myself that she had turned me into a murderer.

“Where was Stransky?” I asked, a little hoarsely.

“He was there, sitting at a table halfway across the club. I knew that they did this, from time to time. He liked to watch. She liked him to watch.”

“And?” “And? You want to know the details?”

I really, really did. “Did John-Paul know your alt?”

“He didn’t. He would have intervened immediately if he had. Inch was off the table for me, even as an alt, because as an alt I could still exploit the knowledge I had of her.”

“So I suppose that the fruit, now unexpectedly within reach, was all the more tempting for being forbidden?”

“It was a moment of weakness, but yes.” He looked into the distance at the memory for a few seconds, and then he came back to the moment and finished his latte.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“You want me to spell it out for you? We fucked.”

“Right there in the club?”

“They had rooms. We took one. Stransky’s crosshairs never left us the whole time.”

“He didn’t turn them off?”

“Why turn them off? Like I said, Inch wanted him to watch. That was how she knew he was watching. She didn’t try to conceal him from me – he was in her profile as her partner, after all, so it really wouldn’t have 45

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required an SL detective to work it all out.”

I leaned towards him a little. “And how was she?” I asked, my mouth a little dry.

He cleared his throat. “Well, uh…” He broke away from my gaze. “She was incredible.”

“You came?”

“Look,” he said, “suffice to say I might have appeared to have motive.”

“You could have deleted the log of that encounter.”

“Inch would still have had a copy of it.”

“Lost amongst the copies of her many other interactions. Do you seriously think they’d have traced every single person she spoke to?”

“I realised it was only a small clue. It’s just hard to stop thinking about it when you know it exists.”

I sat back up straight. “And it was only the one time?”

“You have to believe me,” he said earnestly, “I felt terrible the next day. Don’t imagine I did it to get at JP. Well, perhaps a little; perhaps just a tiny bit. Yes, I wanted her; but after that I resolved to teleport away if I ever ran into her again. In any case, she’d told me it was a one-night only thing.”

I was back in my own memory of her; she’d imposed the same condition and reminded me of it at the end: Inch Sideways: Did you cum in RL? Tell me that you did.

Definitely Thursday: Yes. I did.

Inch Sideways: Good. I'm glad it was the best that it could be.

Definitely Thursday: Because it's for one night only?

Inch Sideways: Because it's for one night only.

Definitely Thursday: Such a shame.

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Inch Sideways: Think of it this way: such a *memory*.

But I waved this restriction away. “You had alts.”

“I think she’d have known, just the same.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But maybe not.” A week before this moment on the Thames I’d been dancing in an alt I’d named Masculamity with Inch Sideways in an alt she’d named Coffeegirl29. She hadn’t known I’d recognised her, mere moments into her new account’s existence at Help Island (and from her signature phrase of ‘lol is not allowed’); nor had she recognised me. And I had wanted her all over again, but this time to punish her for what she’d turned me into.

Masculamity pushes your chin gently upwards so that he can see your eyes.

Coffeegirl29 looks into yours.

Masculamity descends slowly towards your lips a little, hesitating for just a moment at the halfway point.

Coffeegirl29: The point of no return?

Masculamity: The point of no return.

Coffeegirl29: Cross it.

I would have crossed it too, except then there had been an interruption, and that interruption was why I’d ended up coming to London to meet this man for a passport. So I had unfinished business with Inch Sideways.

“She’s still in SL,” I said. “She’s called Coffegirl now.”

The moment I said it, I wished I hadn’t.

“Really?” he said. “Interesting that you know that.”

“Alright.” It was time to change the subject again. “So your life as Stransky was over.”

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“Completely.” He looked relieved that we’d moved on from the telling of this encounter.

“And you, I suppose, developed your other agency.”

“Yes.” “Which was, I’m guessing, Spencer Huckleberry, Metaverse Investigations.”

He grinned. “Yes.” “Ok. So let’s cut to the here and now, Spence. Why have you brought me here and what do you want from me?”

He nodded approval at my directness. “Because I want you to come and work for me,” he said.

48

4 Halfway back from Mica’s, I pulled over at an abandoned petrol station and changed in the car back into my skin-tight jeans and a peasant top that revealed just a hint of midriff. I was at my hotel just over five minutes later. I went straight up to my room and switched on my laptop. Whilst it booted, I went out onto the balcony for a cigarette.

The night was clear and a little chilly. I checked my phone and saw the tweets Stransky had sent out: Thursdaywillfindyou: I found the guy who posted nude pictures of #elizabethfox without her consent. His turn now to know what that feels like. #thursdaypostin30 And: Thursdaywillfindyou: Payback time for the guy who caused #elizabethfox to take her own life. Stay tuned for the URL… #thursdaypostin30 After each was the usual string of misogynistic replies I’d come to expect now from all my announcements. How these dickheads hated me. But, oh, how they feared me also. It was glorious.

I linked my camera to the laptop and transferred the 49

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pictures, then sorted them into two folders: Immediate and Reserve. I flicked through them quickly, looking at Mica staring up at me – well, not all the way up in the vast majority of cases – and quickly losing his power of better judgement. I uploaded them to my cloud drive first for safe keeping, then logged in to the filesharing service I’d be using that evening. Big Bytes Bunker accepted a zipped folder of my jpegs greedily and bombarded me with adverts for its premium service plus an array of ads designed to look as though they were bona fide buttons on the web page. Anything for a clickthrough; these days the euphemism for shit looking webpages is ‘monetised’. Whatever.

I then uploaded the pictures individually to a couple of revenge-porn websites used by (mostly) guys to humiliate their exes by posting their private nude and sex photos (“These are just for us, baby; I promise I’ll never share them, ok?”). I added text to each post: short, sweet and to the point. I always avoided anything lengthy, anything emotional, anything wordy or excessive; the less they knew about me, the more they feared me. I never returned to a post to respond to any comments for the same reason.

I sent out a new tweet linking to the zip file and then another linking to the revenge sites. Everything would get deleted by the so called ‘moderators’ eventually – I used a new account every time I posted – but the fileshare would last at least a week: enough time for the pictures to be ‘out there’.

I closed the laptop and jumped into the shower, then dressed in white, knee-length eveningwear. I was out of the door by ten to eleven; just enough time to make my 50

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next appointment.

I slipped into the seat next to him at the bar in the Black Vulture, his three paper coasters lined up to his right – as he’d said they would be – like the end of a trailing sentence.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked me. “Perhaps a dry vermouth with a slice of something?”

“I prefer my somethings in squeezes,” I replied. “Why are we meeting in public, Fred? Nice to finally meet you, by the way.”

Fred said, “There’s an irony to the evolution of intelligence work set against the context of everimproving technology. Whilst the rest of the world communicates more and more easily, we find ourselves going back to ink and bits of paper and… face to face meetings.

Don’t count on this being a regular occurrence, though.”

“Are you telling me that you’re compromised?”

“Well, there’s always that possibility.” He caught the eye of the bartender with a small wave of his right index finger. “In any case,” he added, “this is a good opportunity to thank you personally for the work you did in spring.”

“I’d say you don’t have to thank me,” I told him, “except that that was a particularly murky task.”

“No more murky than anything else I’ve asked of you,” he commented. “You just got to see that job in a little bit more detail.”

“Is that the rule? The more you see of something the murkier it gets?”

“That, my dear Thursday, has always been the rule.”

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He ordered for me and we took our drinks to a table in the corner. Fred sat, I noticed, with the best possible view of the room behind me. It made me feel exposed.

He pulled a seven inch tablet out of his inner jacket pocket and entered a code, then put it on the table in front of me.

“Colour e-ink?” I asked.

“Back-lit screens catch wandering eyes a little too easily for my liking.” He tapped on a folder and then a jpeg. It enlarged to take up the whole screen. “What do you make of that?”

I looked. There was a vast collection of simple prims in the picture, all lined up in rows. Perhaps there were twenty-five to thirty in a row and as many rows. I pinched my fingers on the screen and pulled them slowly apart, zooming in until I was looking more closely at a selection of six or seven of the prims. They were cubes with a quarter cut out of them to make basic L shapes. Every face of each primitive was a different colour.

“How many faces do you get to a cube?” he asked.

“It’s not a trick question.”

“Six, of course,” I replied.

“Right. So cut a quarter away and how many do you get then?”

The ‘insides’ of the cut would expose two new faces.

“Eight,” I said.

“Correct. Now, notice how each face is a different colour. How is colour worked out on a prim in Second Life?”

“You mean from red, green and blue values?” I asked.

He nodded. “So you have 256 values for each of red, 52

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green and blue, making a total of over sixteen and a half million colours.”

“Or,” he said, “to put it another way, any colour can be reverse-engineered to three numbers, each between zero and 255.”

“Right.”

“So – in terms of colour – one of those cut cubes there represents three numbers multiplied by eight sides – a total of twenty-four numbers. And the significance of 256 is…?”

“The significance of 255,” I corrected him, “is that it’s the highest number that can be represented within one byte of computer memory.”

“So one of those cut cubes could effectively be used to store 24 bytes of information, would you agree?”

I zoomed back out to take in the whole array again.

“This… is a data storage device?”

“Twenty-five lots of twenty-five cut cubes, each holding twenty-four bytes of information: a total of nearly fifteen kilobytes stored in 625 prims. That’s enough space for about three thousand words.”

I was impressed. “How is data entered and retrieved?”

I asked him.

Fred leaned over the tablet and zoomed in on a corner of the image at a smaller collection of uncut prims at the far end of the array. “We think this is a keyboard: you enter your message by tapping or clicking the keys.

Presumably, there’s also a display device nearby; it wouldn’t need to be too complicated: an array of sixtyfour cubes arranged in an eight by eight matrix would be entirely sufficient for displaying in pixel form an alphanumeric character, one at a time. Or they could 53

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have gone for something more complex. As I’m sure you’re aware, you can flatten out those cut cubes to create a one by four matrix of side-by-side faces, so actually you could make that eight by eight from just sixteen prims – making in theory possible a much larger display.”

“Wait,” I said, “this is the only picture you have?”

“It is,” he replied. “It got sent to us.”

“By whom?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know.” Fred cleared his throat.

“The email address used appears to have been set up for the sole purpose of sending just this picture. We managed to get hold of an IP for the session, of course, but it was a public wireless spot on a train.”

“They just sent you this picture? Nothing else?”

“A couple of lines of text identifying this as a prototype data storage device and how it uses colour.

Nothing more.”

“It’s only a prototype?”

“Of course it’s only a prototype. You think the final working version would look like this? Once it’s finished, they’ll shrink everything down as small as they can and put it in a box – which they’ll then sink underground somewhere. The keyboard and output display wouldn’t even need to be in the same region. We have a device here that can be accessed from anywhere in the world and which could store a three thousand word essay if needs be on the details of a planned terrorist attack; and it can do all this without a single piece of detectable text ever being sent, spoken or stored – without needing even to be entered on a computer keyboard. A keylogger would be useless. Until we know who owns it and 54

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where it is, this is a virtually untraceable method of communication.”

“You’re assuming,” I said, “that someone’s created it with intent. It could just be one of those things that someone made purely because they could.”

“And they sent it to us just because they want a gold star and a pat on the back for their ingenuity, is that what you’re thinking? The existence of this device isn’t the thing that bothers me, Thursday. For all of Second Life’s new bells and whistles, this could have been created years ago; I realise that. For that matter, perhaps it was.

It’s a dead drop method and God knows it’s not as though we’ve never had to deal with those before. But you don’t run an intelligence agency by knowing the location of every last stone in the land a secret message could be left under: you run an intelligence agency by casting your net wide and seeing what links turn up. It’s an art-form, not a science. You have to feel the patterns.

You have to learn the ways and methods of your opponents. I’m not showing this to you because I want you to check it out by simple virtue of the fact that it exists; I’m showing this to you because it feels like something to me… It feels like it’s part of something bigger… and I don’t have the luxury of taking the chance that I’m wrong.”

He was trying to dominate me. “Seriously?” I said, my eyebrows raised. “You’re using the guy-going-onhis-gut-instinct thing on me? Get off your fucking soapbox, Fred. I’m not some rookie intern who needs The Real World knocked into her after her Harvard education.

I get why this is potentially serious.

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form’ to be, however, there’s plenty of actual science which suggests that if you go looking for witchcraft you’ll constantly think you’ve found it. Your real world might be one of constantly fearing you’ll miss something terrible, but my real world allows for there being plenty of non-terrible things going on all around me. Your instincts might be wrong. This might be someone who’s figured all this out and wants to alert you to what’s possible.”

“From an anonymous email account.”

“Because he – or she – fears exactly this reaction and doesn’t want to become the next person on your watchlist.” I sighed and sat back. “I don’t know, Fred.

I’m not saying you necessarily are wrong. It’s just…”

“It’s just what?”

“You guys,” I said. “You never stop.”

“Stop… what?” He looked genuinely bemused.

“Stop… fighting.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

It hadn’t been lost on me during the couple of days of my stay in this country that the topic of fifty per cent of the conversations around me had been the advance of Russian supporting fighters in the East. “It’s nearly twenty-five years since the Cold War ended,” I said, “and where are we? How have we moved on?”

He frowned. “This is about the Ukraine?”

“And everything else that’s fucking up the planet right now. ISIS, China, North Korea, Iran… each side’s paranoia and aggression provoking yet more paranoia and aggression from the others.” I sighed again. “We’re doomed.”

“Right,” said Fred. “Right. Well, I didn’t expect this 56

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from one of the world’s finest metaverse investigators.”

“Oh please,” I replied. “You use me because I have nothing to lose.”

“And because you love it.”

“I do love it,” I said. There was no point in denying it.

“Anyway, you’re hardly one to talk about perpetuating cycles of whatever, given your current bread-and-butter activity.”

He had a point. “Alright. It doesn’t matter. How do you want me to approach this?”

He eyed me up carefully for a moment, then said, “I wouldn’t actually disagree that the activity of one side reinforces the entrenched views – and therefore the subsequent activity – of the other. Yes, that is the way it works. None of us especially like that. But that doesn’t mean that one side just stopping everything – if such a thing were even possible – would cause everyone else to start trusting them and ceasing all their own stuff.”

“There are shades of grey to this,” I replied. “Nothing has to happen overnight.”

“But it would need to happen, presumably, before the next presidential election…”

He was right, I supposed. It was like an oil spill: everything fucked up as far as the eye could see and the causes so obvious; but where did one even begin?

“What do you want me to do?” I asked him again.

“This looks to me like a needle and haystack job.”

“Not quite,” he said and double-tapped the tablet.

The picture snapped shut and the screen reverted to file view. “Whoever took this picture saved it in SL and then transferred it to their computer.” He highlighted the filename of the jpeg: Snapshot : Peter, (124, 89, 2000).

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“A sim called Peter?” I asked.

“I know it’s not much to go on,” he replied. “But you never know what might turn up if you hang around there for a while and ask enough people. Maybe someone will remember seeing it.”

“Oh joy,” I said. “You know, it’s not like I don’t have other things to do.”

“It’s about time you did some proper intelligence legwork. We can’t have you thinking it’s all high-octane thrills.” He tucked the tablet back into his pocket and stood to leave.

Then he paused. “So did you get him?” he asked.

“Who?” “The guy you came here for.”

“Oh,” I said. He meant Mica. “Yes, of course.”

He hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Does settling down not appeal to you at all? You know I could still sort that out for you, right? A new identity; a new life.

Everything would be done for you. You don’t have to continue working for that guy.”

“I choose to,” I replied.

“One of these days, someone’s going to be waiting for you with a firearm. I don’t think you really have any idea just how dangerous what you do is.”

I met his steady gaze. “Actually, we check out our targets pretty thoroughly.”

“You find out who they are not what they are. Anyone with a bit of knowledge can do that these days.”

“I’m well aware of the risk,” I told him. “Still. These things have to be done. Consequences have to be delivered.”

He nodded. It wasn’t a nod of agreement. “Just bear 58

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in mind that I won’t be in this post forever,” he told me.

“Neither for that matter will the people above who underwrite things like this. This is a time-limited offer.”

“I get that.”

Another pause. He appeared about to say something and then to change his mind. “Okay Thursday. It’s your call. Get me an initial report on that sim by the end of the week. Better still, get me the name of the person who built this device or is using it. Don’t go maverick on me on this: keep me in the loop on everything.” He left.

I sat by myself at the table in the corner for a few more minutes, but turned so I could see the whole room.

There was a man with long, sandy hair and a checked shirt sitting with his back to me at the bar, and I watched him for a while and thought about beaches at dawn and hot tea warming me from the inside. And I said to myself softly in an Irish accent, “twitter” a few times and smiled. Then he got up to go and ruined my fantasy with a face that was completely wrong.

59

5 “You want me to what?” I had asked the man who had once been half of Step Stransky.

“I want you to work for me,” Spence repeated.

“And why on Earth would you want me to do that?

And why on Earth would I want to do that?”

His face went serious. “Let’s get one thing straight.

No part of me thinks that you killing JP was in any way a good thing.”

“Well I’m glad we cleared that up.”

“It’s true he was starting to piss me off, but he was my friend and I grieved his death. I still grieve it. I wish he was still here today.”

“For what it’s worth,” I told him, “so do I.” “No offence, but that’s actually worth very little to me.

In fact, I take that back – it is worth something to me. If you’re experiencing daily guilt over what you did then I’m glad. I want you to continue experiencing that for the rest of your life.”

I scowled. “Are you going somewhere with this?”

“I just want that to be clear,” he replied. “What I say next might appear to contradict it. As far as my business is concerned, you did me a favour. Whilst JP was still alive – and, in particular, whilst he was with Inch – I went nowhere. We got off to a great start, him and me, but then the momentum ran out. When JP died, I could 60

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no longer play any part in the Step Stransky Detective Agency and so I had to make it work on my own.”

“And I take it you did – make it work.”

Spence looked at me. “I made you several offers to come work with me as Spencer, Thursday. Why did you never take me up?”

“I remember Step telling me all about this guy called Spencer Huckleberry,” I replied. “Was that you I had those conversations with or was it John-Paul? Let me see if I can remember the phrases… ‘a wannabe detective’… ‘a cliché’… ‘a narcissist who’s more concerned with his image than he is with helping his clients’…’a-“ Spence held up his hand for me to stop.

“To a certain extent, I played along with that. I guess I thought it was funny. But did you ever hear from dissatisfied customers of mine? I turned down business whilst JP was still alive so I could focus on Stransky work. When I turned all my attention to my own agency, it took off really quickly.”

“Step also told me you crossed a line by doing RL work.”

“Well, that was all JP, of course. As I told you – he didn’t want to get into any of that.

Metaverse investigation was a fun and philosophical distraction for him – nothing more. Real life work – as he saw it – was a whole other thing. And he was right: it is. And I understand his reasons for not wanting to get into it.

Quite apart from anything else, it’s dangerous. But sometimes, you can only go so far if you’re going to limit yourself to SL-only. What do you do when the guy you’re chasing just doesn’t care about his metaverse life; when he’ll happily walk away from his friends and his 61

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inventory at a moment’s notice? How do you hold someone like that accountable if you’re not prepared to chase him into RL and find the things he does care about?

You know exactly what I’m talking about and don’t pretend that you don’t.”

“It’s an invasion of people’s right to privacy.”

“So what? You step on other people’s rights and a few of yours get taken away. That’s the way it works in society.”

“Vigilante justice,” I said, “plays no role in stable society.”

“Says the murderer.” He stopped himself. “Okay, that was taking us away from the point.”

“It was. Just because I’ve broken laws doesn’t mean I disagree with them. If it needs to get taken into RL then it’s a matter for the police.”

“I don’t believe that you actually believe that,” he said.

“One day, the police – and, more importantly, the politicians – might actually understand all of this well enough to create laws and procedures which get these jobs done without trampling all over the rights of everyone else; until that day comes, someone has to do something about online attitudes and behaviours that risk becoming mainstream in the meantime. People need to know that if they shit all over someone then they’re going to get hunted down and their internet anonymity won’t be worth a damn.

It’s about there being consequences, Thursday.

Most people behave themselves because they want to be good people, but some do so only in order to avoid being punished: these are the guys who pretend to be the man of every woman’s dreams in Second Life and then delete their 62

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account when they’re tired of fucking her. These are the guys who coerce naked pictures out of their lovers and then post them online – anonymously, I might add – for everyone to masturbate over. They do so because they can and because they think there will be no consequences.”

“For them,” I said.

“Precisely.

They don’t give a shit about the consequences for their victims. Neither, for that matter, does society. People get naked in front of each other all the time, but when a woman takes a picture of herself for someone she’s in love with and it gets stolen and posted some place public then she’s either a slut or stupid or both. Whole careers have been destroyed by a single picture. Lives are being wrecked on a daily basis. If we don’t try to do something about this then who will?”

“Which brings us back to my first question,” I said.

“Why do you want me to work for you?”

“Because business is booming and I need help,” Spence said. “Because I know that you’re good. And – frankly – because you’ve got nothing left to protect. I can ask you to go places and you’ll have no reason not to. I need someone with those exact attributes.”

“I appreciate your frankness,” I told him. “So let me be equally frank in return: why should this interest me?”

“For three reasons,” he replied. “First, you need money and I can pay you. Some of my clients pay serious money for satisfaction. Second, you need an identity and I can sort one out for you – a proper passport this time and a National Insurance number so you can open up a bank account and pay rent somewhere; it’ll take a while, but I have the contacts.

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You can stay with me if you want until that’s done.”

“Okay,” I said. “Those are good reasons. And what’s the third?”

“The third,” he replied, leaning towards me, “is that I have finally – after five years on and off – tracked down The Notecard Guy.” I held his gaze for a moment. “Seriously?”

“One hundred per cent.”

“In that case,” I told him, “you have my complete attention.”

The Notecard Guy: that elusive case we’d never actually managed to ‘solve’; a guy who’d targeted high-profile, partnered women – designers, fashion bloggers, venue managers and so on. For each victim, he’d create a new SL account and use it to befriend the woman’s partner, then gradually accumulate enough personal information on this person to help him hack their account and impersonate them in SL. If all else failed, he’d use a brute force method to break their password. After he’d had sex with the target woman using their partner’s body, he’d delete the entire inventory of the account he’d broken into and leave just a four word notecard: I fucked your wife. Then he’d post the entire IM of his session with her online. There had been occasions also when he’d managed to persuade her to voice – of course, he wouldn’t voice back, but he’d pretend he was doing so and they’d jointly attribute her not hearing him as a Second Life glitch – and he would post a recording of that as well.

Oh, how I had wanted that guy. Stransky and I had tracked him from account to account for months. But 64

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how did you ‘get’ someone who had no permanent account in SL, who just drifted from body to body and discarded them when done? We could never ‘spot’ him before he launched another attack; all we could do was learn about what he’d done from the victim and her partner after one. All we could do was try to build a picture.

Definitely Thursday: This sucks.

Definitely Thursday: We can do nothing to this guy.

Definitely Thursday: All we’re doing is giving him the attention he wants.

Definitely Thursday: What we need is a decent hacker who can get us this guy’s IP from the Linden records.

Step Stransky: Right; that would be smart.

Step Stransky: Earn ourselves a lifetime ban from SL. Step Stransky: That’d learn him.

Step Stransky: In any case, what exactly would you do with that information if you had it?

Step Stransky: Would you attempt to contact every desirable woman in SL to warn them of an IP address they themselves wouldn’t have the first clue how to detect?

Definitely Thursday: I don’t know.

Definitely Thursday: What I’d love to do is track down this prick in RL. Definitely Thursday: Treat him to some of the humiliation he inflicts on others.

Step Stransky: Then it’s just as well for your personal safety that we don’t do RL investigations.

So all we ever got on The Notecard Guy was a bunch of 65

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IMs which revealed virtually no pattern whatsoever. To one woman he was literate, tender and descriptive; to another he was coarse and crude. To one he was submissive; to another he was dominant and brutal.

Well, he was attempting to copy a style that was familiar to each of them. He did it extraordinarily well.

“I have a contact in Linden,” Spence told me. “An extremely unofficial contact. He managed to get me that IP address you were always dreaming of.”

“My idea was to get someone to hack the Linden servers for it.”

“You don’t hack into the Linden databases lightly,” Spence said. “Not whilst your business model depends almost entirely on your continuing residency. In any case, the records only go back so far. Data protection and all that. I had to wait for him to attack again – actually, I had to wait for him to attack again and for someone to report it to me; for all I know, he could be doing this every month without my knowledge.”

“And he did?”

“He did. Just over a couple of months ago. Emeralder Green, a high-profile fashion photographer and blogger.

You’ve heard of her? Good. You might know then that she’d been single for over a year. Then, around about Easter I think it was, she blogged about her new man, Polymer Pedigree.

The Notecard Guy befriended Polymer just a few days later, probably by visiting in turn repeatedly all of the places in his picks until he caught sight of him.”

“How do you know it was him and not a genuine friendship?”

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“Have you forgotten the pattern? The friender was always easy to identify as the culprit because as soon as the deed was done they no longer logged on. Same thing here. He used a five month old account – called it Dontouch Burnyou – dressed it up like one of these urban fighters, which was Polymer’s usual look.”

“Has your insider given you any information about where he got the money for his outfits?”

“Actually, yes. Dontouch worked as a female dancer at a strip club for about a month and managed to accrue well over 10,000 Lindens in tips during this time.

Enough for any outfit, with plenty left over.” That made sense; with his emoting skills, he could probably have made a lot more besides, if he’d wanted. It was a tiny fact, but just the same I got a momentary rise of goose bumps at having actually learned something new about this elusive man. Or woman.

“So you got the IP,” I said. “Then what?”

“I’ve worked very hard on building up something of a network of contacts over the last few years,” Spence replied. “An IP can be resolved to a street address if you know the right people with the right skills.”

“You know where he lives?” I could hardly breathe.

“I know,” said Spence, “where he lives.

“The question is,” he continued, “what do we do about it?”

“I want to know everything you’ve got on him,” I demanded.

He smiled. “Does this mean that you’re going to work for me?”

I stopped. A week ago, I’d been running from my hideout on the Isle of Wight, with minutes only to spare.

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What life I’d managed to scrape together on the island had been ripped from me on the discovery of my identity; it was the second time in as many months that I’d been fleeing with the police right behind me and despair doesn’t even come close to what I was feeling when I stepped back onto the mainland in Southampton.

For the past seven days I’d been hiding out in a house I’d broken into in Millwood and pinning my hopes on this man and his promise of a Polish passport: an identity; a ticket back to the real world, where I could try to start up something that felt in some way normal. Why was I so attracted to this proposal?

If I said yes, would I be able to sleep without worrying that Mr and Mrs Moore might return in the middle of the night from whatever holiday it was they’d been on?

Would I be able to close my eyes and actually empty my mind completely? I was so tired. I so wanted to be able to sleep.

And there was something else I wanted too.

“How do I know you won’t just turn me in?” I asked.

“The answer to that question,” Spence replied, “is the same as the answer to this one: how do I know you won’t kill me like you killed JP?” “Fair enough. Mutual risk it is.”

“Or mutual trust.”

“Then you have yourself a deal,” I announced, “except there’s something else I want.”

“And what’s that?”

“A copy of Stransky’s IM log with Inch.”

He looked astonished and confused for a moment, but then he shrugged. “Whatever. Sure. But only on completion of your first job. Fair?”

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“Fair,” I said. We shook hands.

I looked around me. The people and their stories continued to flow past, and now my own tale was turning a new page.

I was in London. I was real. I was alive.

69

6 I logged in to ‘Peter’ once I was back at the hotel. I used one of the alts I reserved for ‘Fred work’, a one year old male avatar called Disco Friendly. He wore a white jacket with shoulder pads and rolled-up sleeves, and his long hair was tied back in a ponytail.

Greeter: Welcome to Peter’s island, Disco. Please do not leave the landing area until you have familiarised yourself with the sim rules, as laid out in the notecard you have been given.

The landing area was a small wooden platform at the southern edge of the region. It stood on nine stilts, three of which disappeared into the start of seawater at the edge of the sim whilst the other six stood on sand. I had a quick cam around and took in a large island of open spaces – beaches, fields, meadows and a small wooded area – and a tall hill in the centre. At the top of the hill there was a small stone building which appeared to be empty, though my radar told me that this X/Y coordinate currently held two people; they were either at an altitude way above me, therefore, or the building was on its own parcel and the owner had set its privacy to block the viewing of avatars from outside it.

Or they were inside the hill. The best concealment in 70

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SL is in the spaces you would not think to look in. I slid my camera inside the hill and found it empty, a hollow void all the way down to the water that lurks below every single sim. Second Life is a world of floating land.

I accepted the notecard and opened it up: Welcome to Peter’s island. Please do not leave the landing area until you have familiarised yourself with the sim rules, as laid out in this notecard. These rules are for the benefit of all and will make your experience here a more immersive and fulfilling one.

RULE #1 - DRESS. There is a basket by the steps leading down from this platform. Touch it to receive a cotton robe, then remove all of your current clothing and attachments and put on this robe (you may retain your hair). “Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:2-8).

RULE #2 – ACCESS. The lowlands are open to you for reflection and meditation, however the hill is Peter’s space and should not be encroached upon unless you have been given access at the gate to visit him. Flying is not permitted in this sim.

RULE #3 – BEHAVIOUR. Please be respectful in your behaviour towards others, as you would in any sim.

This is a place of quiet reflection and Peter asks that you do not intrude upon the thoughts of others by 71

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starting up a conversation in public chat. If you would like to talk to someone here, do so in IM, however do not be offended if you receive no reply and do not persist in sending messages to provoke one. “Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.”

(Peter 3:3-4).

Hmm. I closed the notecard and clicked on the basket, and a robe was delivered to me. I put it on.

I descended the set of ten or so steps which led down from the platform to the beach. A white-robed woman called just ‘Jessica’ stood there, a group tag above her head identifying herself as ‘Peter’s friend’.

Jessica: Welcome, Disco.

Jessica: Thank you for observing our dress rule.

Disco Friendly: Hello Jessica.

Disco Friendly: Oh well; your sim, your rules.

Jessica smiles.

Jessica: Are you new to the island?

Disco Friendly: Yes I am.

Jessica: May I be of any assistance to you at all?

Disco Friendly: Well I’m not sure. Is it ok if I take a look around?

Jessica: Yes, of course.

Disco Friendly: Perhaps I’ll have a few questions later.

Jessica: I’ll be here if you do.

Disco Friendly: Thanks very much.

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Jessica: Just one thing…

Disco Friendly: Yes? Jessica: If you’re here to speak with Peter, he won’t be seeing visitors until 5pm.

It was just gone four.

Disco Friendly: Okay, thanks.

Jessica: But the queue is forming already.

Jessica: He doesn’t like to disappoint people who have waited, so we will be closing the queue soon.

Disco Friendly: Ah, I see. Thanks.

Disco Friendly: Better join it now, then.

Disco Friendly: Just out of interest, how long will I get with him?

Jessica: As long as you need, Disco.

Jessica: That is the reason why we will need to close the queue.

I thanked her and she told me to take the path a few paces from where she stood. It was made from wooden slats and it took me between sand dunes to open grasslands where I spotted two robed people, one standing on a tree stump with his arms at his sides and the other sitting cross legged amongst white bearded dandelions. There was what I suppose one might call a minimalist feel to this sim, though that word didn’t quite capture it somehow. I’d visited many nature-spot regions in SL before, many of which could only be described as exquisite in their detail and beauty; compared to Peter, however, they all felt rather as though they were trying a little too hard. Here was 73

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simplicity and understatement. But simplicity is rarely an uncomplicated achievement: whoever had put this place together had done so with incredible skill.

The path took me through the grasses to a metal gate set in hedgerow; beyond the gate was a garden. I entered it. Flagstones now led me across a perfect lawn and around a smooth boulder in the centre with water gurgling from a hole cut through it. Four benches had their back to the path along the way, and on one of them was sat silently another robed avatar. I looked at her profile. She was called Fairlight Ninth and the text on her SL tab read, “Take pleasure in the tiniest of things and the world’s face will change from one of hopelessness to one of joy. The biggest lie we have been sold is that the rejection of materialism would be a hardship: the more you reduce, the richer the world’s gifts become.”

At the far end of the garden was an archway into a small copse of trees. On emerging from this, I faced a long, dry stone wall and beyond that the start of the hill’s rise. A hut to the right stood beside a wooden gate set in the wall. A queue of seven robed avatars stood in a rough line leading up to this.

I looked around for a queueing system: something I could click on that would reserve my place in the line.

Nothing turned my mouse pointer into a hand. No text hovered above any object. It seemed we just had to stand there… and wait.

As I entered into the chat range of these avatars, lines of text started scrolling up from the bottom of my screen and the illusion of tranquillity that I hadn’t really noticed until that precise moment got shattered into pieces. Oh 74

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well. So much for rule number three, then.

Blood Never: lol Juniper Romsey: At least, that’s what I reckon.

Diego Boy laughs.

Third Fourth: You *have* to try it, though.

Third Fourth: I’m telling you.

Third Fourth: All your scepticism will melt away.

Third Fourth: Everything is so much realer.

Juniper Romsey: More real.

Cardinal Jones: hey Disco Juniper Romsey: Hey there, Disco.

Diego Boy: Welcome Disco.

Disco Friendly: Hello all.

Blood Never: I tried it; it made me nauseous.

Third Fourth: They fixed that.

Third Fourth: They’re still working on it.

Third Fourth: That’s why it hasn’t been released yet.

Disco Friendly: Are you all here to see Peter?

Juniper Romsey: Of course, Disco.

Without Motorway: You’re eighth in line, Disco: don’t expect to get to the gate any time soon.

Diego Boy: We’re not actually supposed to talk here, but what else can you do?

Disco Friendly: How long have you been waiting?

Diego Boy: I’ve been here nearly eight hours now.

Diego was second in line. In front of him was slumped an avatar called Twenty Pieces.

Disco Friendly: What about Twenty?

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I got here.

Diego Boy: When I joined, he said he’d been here a day – but that could mean anything.

Juniper Romsey: It couldn’t mean *anything*.

Diego Boy: Ok pedant.

Diego Boy: It could mean anything from 6 to 24 hours.

Without Motorway: The gate opens again in just over 40 minutes, what are they going to do if he’s still AFK? Without Motorway: If they wait for him to come back then I’m leaving.

Cardinal Jones: Still, 24 hours is a long time to be expected to wait.

Juniper Romsey: He said “a day” – not 24 hours.

Cardinal Jones: But that was 8 hours ago.

Blood Never: You know there’s someone up there with him now, right?

Juniper Romsey: So? What of it?

Disco Friendly: What’s the big deal with seeing him anyway?

Disco Friendly: If you don’t mind me asking.

Juniper Romsey: You didn’t hear about Peter? So how come you’re here?

Disco Friendly: A friend told me I should come here.

Juniper Romsey: Your friend was correct.

Disco Friendly: Have you all seen him before?

Third Fourth: Only Juniper out of all of us here.

Juniper Romsey: And I’ve only seen him the once.

Cardinal Jones: She won’t tell us what it’s like.

Juniper Romsey: If I tried to, it would cheapen the experience.

Disco Friendly: What’s he like?

Juniper Romsey sighs.

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Juniper Romsey: Would you agree that wisdom is something more than intelligence? You can’t really be wise without being intelligent, but you can be intelligent without being wise.

Disco Friendly nods.

Disco Friendly: I guess I’d accept that.

Juniper Romsey: Peter is something more than wise.

Juniper Romsey: I don’t know what that extra thing is.

Perhaps it’s compassion. I don’t know.

Diego Boy: That’s interesting. I heard someone talk about compassion recently.

Diego Boy: I think she said something like empathy is to compassion as intelligence is to wisdom.

Diego Boy: That fits with what you said, Juniper.

Diego Boy: You can’t have compassion without empathy, she said, but you can have empathy without compassion.

Diego Boy: A torturer could be highly empathic, for example.

Diego Boy: But they lack compassion.

Juniper Romsey: Right.

Juniper Romsey: Perhaps, then, wisdom is intelligence plus empathy and what Peter is is wisdom plus compassion.

Juniper Romsey: But see I already hate that I’ve boxed him up like that.

Cardinal Jones: I hate psychology.

Juniper Romsey: I love psychology.

Juniper Romsey: But I hate categorisation and ranking and rating things on a one to ten scale.

Juniper Romsey: It ends up making everything feel meaningless, like you’re trying to define everything in 77

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terms of how much green it contains.

Juniper Romsey: It makes me want to scratch.

Cardinal Jones: Isn’t categorisation and ranking and rating things on a one to ten scale what psychology mostly is?

Juniper Romsey: No. Juniper Romsey: That’s like saying isn’t rocket science what physics mostly is.

Juniper Romsey: I think.

I yawned and rolled my neck. It was getting on for three in the morning and it looked highly unlikely that I was going to get to meet this fountain of knowledge plus empathy plus compassion any time soon. Quite apart from anything else, I had a plane to catch the next day.

The adrenalin of my evening’s activity had now well and truly departed and I couldn’t see myself managing much more than another twenty minutes before I started to flag seriously. In any case, did I need to see him? Could the data storage/communication device have been built here without his knowledge?

I looked at the land’s properties. Building permissions were denied to the visitor, but allowed to group members. The group was called ‘Friends of Peter’. I supposed that included people like Jessica, since her tag had been titled more or less that. I wondered how many more people there were in the group and opened its profile to see if I could join. I could not.

Still, I could ask a few questions.

Disco Friendly: Can you build here?

Third Fourth: Nope.

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Disco Friendly: There isn’t a sandbox tucked away somewhere?

Cardinal Jones: You want to build?

Disco Friendly: It passes the time.

Diego Boy: I think the idea is we’re meant to spend our time in the queue in quiet contemplation.

Disco Friendly: I did my contemplation for the day already.

Juniper Romsey: What do you want to build?

Disco Friendly: I don’t know… stuff.

Disco Friendly: You sure there’s no builder’s platform up there somewhere?

Third Fourth: If there was, what good would it be to you down here?

Disco Friendly: Couldn’t I ask you to hold my place in case someone else comes along?

Without Motorway: Whoa buddy… we’ve known you – what? – all of ten minutes?

Without Motorway: That’s hardly long enough for queuing privileges.

Juniper Romsey: When do you know *anyone* behind you in a queue for long enough to start handing out ‘privileges’?

Without Motorway: This is a long-term queue. You can’t ask people to hold your place over a period of time longer than five minutes in a long-term queue.

Juniper Romsey: Because…?

Without Motorway: Because that restricts their freedom.

Without Motorway: What if you need to leave the queue for yourself to go to the bathroom?

Without Motorway: It’s one thing to ask the person in 79

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front of you to hold your place just while you do that, but a whole other layer of social grief to ask them to do that plus hold the place of some other person they didn’t themselves interact with.

Diego Boy: You’ve thought about this a lot, haven’t you?

Blood Never: lol lol is not allowed, I thought to myself, absently.

Without Motorway: You don’t need to think about this; it’s a self-obvious truth.

Without Motorway: You let go of a ball and it drops; you accept a place-hold request of more than five minutes in a long-term queue and you’re likely to be socially inconvenienced.

Without Motorway: It’s a logical consequence.

Without Motorway: As inevitable as gravity.

Disco Friendly: But if I were to go off and build some place, you could always IM me if you needed to leave the queue yourself.

Third Fourth: Good point.

Without Motorway: Not a good point at all. What if I don’t get a reply?

Without Motorway: Then I get into the whole howlong-is-it-polite-to-wait-for-a-reply issue?

Without Motorway: Didn’t I say earlier that they need a system here?

Without Motorway: I mean, it would hardly be pushing SL’s limits, would it?

Diego Boy: Relax, Motorway.

Diego Boy: It’s just a queue.

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Without Motorway: There are queues and there are queues.

Juniper Romsey: Perhaps the queue is meant to be part of the journey.

Third Fourth: So what are we meant to learn in the queue?

Juniper Romsey: Perhaps we’re not meant to learn anything at all.

Third Fourth: But you just said…

Juniper Romsey: Every place in SL is so immediately accessible that the value of getting to it is lowered.

Juniper Romsey: Like me, for example – I live in easy reach of London.

Juniper Romsey: When I’m there, I see all these tourists every day walking round with maps and cameras – well, mostly phones these days for both purposes…

Blood Never: lol Juniper Romsey: They’re appreciating everything so much more than I am, but then they went to more effort to get there than I did.

Juniper Romsey: Maybe this queue is getting us to invest more in our visit to Peter, so that when we do finally meet him, we value it more.

I was in that zone where I was still awake and reading, but the words were linking up to abstract thoughts which wandered off in all directions.

Disco Friendly: cognitive dissonance theory Juniper Romsey: What’s that, Disco?

Disco Friendly: the more you’re inconvenienced by 81

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something you don’t have to do the more positively you later rate it when you do Disco Friendly: something i once read The screen was beginning to blur in and out of focus.

Enough was enough; before long I’d start dropping apostrophes and that would be unthinkable. I didn’t wait to see what response my comments got, I just shut the laptop and curled up on the bed and pulled the sheet half-over me.

Within seconds, I was asleep.

82

7 Eamon Herriot was a man in his early forties. He lived with his wife and two children in a three bedroomed semi-detached house in the suburbs of Cardiff. It had a tidy lawn in front and a neatly paved driveway, and hanging baskets each side of the front door. He was the Head Teacher of a local primary school of about 200 children. According to the most recent Ofsted report, the school was “good with some outstanding qualities”.

“Really?” I said to Spence. We were sitting in his car three doors down, having just completed a couple of walk-bys. “This is our Notecard Guy?” “Oh yes,” he replied. “There’s no doubt about it.”

“How can you say that, though? You only have this hacker’s word for it.”

“Tinhat? Well he’s a very good hacker.”

“Who might be an ex-pupil of this guy, for all you know. Maybe he has some sort of axe to grind.”

“If he does, he’s had plenty of prior opportunities.

This is the man we’re looking for. The IP resolves to this address and, now that we have a target, monitoring of his internet activity has shown multiple log-ins to Second Life here every day during the hours when he’s at home.

It’s him, Thursday.”

“And he has children,” I stated. They were both boys.

One had recently turned fourteen and the other was ten 83

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years old.

I sighed, heavily.

“I was expecting someone…”

“Someone weird?

Someone outcast?

Someone untidy? Scruffy? Dirty? Diseased?”

“Fuck off,” I told him. “You know what I mean.”

The school was about fifteen minutes’ drive away.

“Drive us to Orton Primary,” I said. “I want to meet this guy.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” he enquired, turning the key in the ignition.

“And this is my husband, Simon,” I said to Eamon Herriot. Spence smiled and nodded.

“Pleased to meet you both, Mr and Mrs Step,” the Head Teacher replied. He shook our hands in turn – starting, I noted, with Spence – and tried to hide a quick look at his watch during the action. “You’re thinking of sending your daughter to Orton Primary, I understand?”

“We’re looking at a couple of properties in the area,” I told him, “one of them in Forsyth Way.” I’d noted the street name on the drive over.

Herriot smiled. “Well you’ll have to excuse me – I’m afraid I didn’t get any message from the authority that you were popping in today. I’m very surprised they didn’t advise you to just contact us direct. Still, these days they pool their admin at the council and no-one knows the first thing about anything anymore. You know – cutbacks. I have ten minutes if that’s any good.

Would you care for a quick tour?”

“That’s so kind of you,” I told him. “We’re just trying to get a feel for the local schools, really.”

“I’m with you on that completely,” Herriot said, 84

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leading the way through double doors into the main teaching area, “if a school’s the right place for your children, you should know it from the moment you walk through the door and step into reception. Walking, please, Reece,” he added in the direction of a brownjumpered little boy who’d come skidding to a halt in front of us as we rounded a corner. Herriot gave him a pat on the shoulder as he passed. “As you can see, all our classrooms have interactive whiteboards. We have eight class teachers at the school, two of whom are recently qualified. Where did you say you were moving from? Is that a new sticker, Kyle? Well let me see it!”

He stopped to examine closely the pushed out chest of another boy. “That’s two in two days, right?” Kyle nodded emphatically. “And how did you earn this one?” I got my phonics right. “Good work, Kyle. Think we can go for three stickers next?” The boy nodded and skipped off. “Where did you say you were moving from?” Herriot asked us again.

“Slough,” I said. Meanwhile, Spence said, “Reading.”

“Simon is from Reading originally,” I said, with a patient smile. “But we currently live in Slough.”

“You can take the boy out of Reading,” Spence began, “but you-“ “Thank you dear,” I said. Herriot almost managed to suppress his smile, but not quite.

“Library,” he announced. “This is Mrs Dolcoath, who comes in every week to help us with it.” A seventysomething woman looked up from running a light pen across a bar code and smiled at us over her glasses.

“And here we have the hall.” Herriot pushed through double doors, beyond which were wall bars, an upright 85

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piano and the tallest floor-to-ceiling curtains that a child ever saw; everything that a school hall should contain.

“So why the move?” he asked, leading us back in the direction of reception. “Why are you outside class, Alisha? Well you won’t find the toilets over there, will you?” He pointed and she scooted off in that direction.

“Walking, please, Alisha!” he called after her. Then he looked at us expectantly.

“New job,” I said quickly. Spence closed his mouth.

“Oh yes? Whereabouts?”

“I’m in IT.” “Excellent,” he said. “Perhaps you might be interested in applying for a parent governor position coming up in a couple of months. If you come to us, of course. I hope you do.”

I smiled. “I’ve always wanted to become a school governor, but we won’t be moving until January.”

“Well there are always vacancies coming up.” He looked at his watch again. “I’m really sorry, but I have a meeting to prepare for.”

“Thank you, Mr Herriot,” I said. “This was exactly what we needed.”

“Nice school,” said Spence as we walked back to the car.

“I don’t like this,” I said. “We need to be much more certain.”

“He seemed like a nice guy, right?”

I stopped and looked at him. His mouth was steady but his eyes betrayed his mirth. “You’re mocking me.”

“You want to know what the really funny thing is?” he asked. “This is you. This is Emma Kline, the girl who murdered in real life her SL rival in love.”

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I stood very close to him. “Don’t,” I told him, “use my RL name in public.”

He leaned forward and kissed the top of my head.

“Darling,” he said, “let’s not create a scene. We don’t want to disadvantage our progeny.”

I cupped his balls in my hand. “Don’t be sure I won’t end your family line right here and now,” I said, “darling.” He laughed, but took a couple of steps back anyway.

He opened the school gate for me. “Seriously, though, you’ve crossed the line before. You met JP. You talked with him. You fucked him. And it didn’t matter to you then that all those things made him real in a way a way there’s no way he could possibly have been real to you in SL – you still went through with your plan. You touched him; you smelled him; you tasted him: still he was the guy you wanted to kill. Even though he looked nothing like that guy; even though he sounded nothing like the voice you had for him in your head. Thursday, you’re not the first person I’ve tried to recruit to help me out in RL. There were three others before you, and they were all a hundred per cent up for the job when I put it to them and they all baulked at the very first hurdle. They just couldn’t project onto a real person all the things they knew about him in SL. The two personalities were too disparate, not to mention one being embedded in a cartoon character who didn’t breathe or sweat or burp.

However angry they’d felt about his metaverse behaviour before, that all turned into mere fictional storywriting the moment they actually came face to face with them, the utter non-activity of a person sitting at a desk in front of a keyboard. Thursday, I’d figured you’d 87

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be different.” He zapped the car doors unlocked and we got in.

“I’m just saying,” I said in the sudden close silence of the car – it was windy outside – “that there might be another explanation.”

“There’s only one explanation,” he told me, “that actually fits the facts.”

“What?” I snapped. “That’s an incredibly narrowminded thing to say. How can you be an investigator and not remain open?”

“Everything’s relative to context,” he replied. “It all depends upon when and why you say it.”

I turned to him. “What if it’s his wife?” I asked. “Had you thought about that? She has the same access he does. How do we know it’s not her?”

He shrugged. “Mrs Herriot is a housewife. If she’s the Notecard Guy then why doesn’t anyone from their home log on to SL during the day?”

“And you’re absolutely certain nobody does?”

“Quite certain.”

“Then perhaps this is an extra layer of safeguard. She only operates when her husband is at home so that if any suspicion did come the way of their house, it would fall on him rather than her.”

“You’re suggesting she’s setting him up?”

“Why not? Maybe she secretly despises her husband.

He gets to go out every day and meet people and be someone; she has to stay at home and do the same things day after day. Maybe that makes her feel like shit.”

“And that would mean your nice head teacher could continue to be a nice head teacher, wouldn’t it?”

“However you try to frame this, you’re still 88

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discounting a logical possibility that we should look into.”

“I’m not commenting on the logical possibilities. I’m asking why you need to believe in this dichotomy over the other.”

“Because my dichotomy makes sense,” I said.

“And the head teacher as suspect – which is not ‘my’ dichotomy, by the way; I don’t own it – doesn’t? Are you sure you’re not just choosing a possibility that fits your stereotypes better?”

I stared at him. “What stereotypes are in any way relevant here?”

“Seriously?” he asked me. “You’ve just laid down the ‘bored housewife’ stereotype almost word-for-word.”

“The stereotypical bored housewife,” I said, “goes around sleeping with other men. She doesn’t rape other women online.”

“Only because stereotypes are old and the internet is new. Perhaps the internet has liberated a whole new population of bored housewives who don’t have the courage to actually do anything in the real world but find online anonymity safe enough to enable them to seek the thrills they’re missing. Consider it Bored Housewife 2.0.”

I ignored his sarcasm. “The majority of teachers are women. Perhaps it’s them she hates. Her husband gets to interact with them intellectually every day; perhaps he talks about their work at home and she thinks to herself how nice it is for them that they get to create these professional identities so aloof from the business of flesh.

She resents their achievements because it’s been denied her. She resents any polished female exterior. These are 89

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the people the Notecard Guy targets, right? It’s the polished people he – or she – goes after. His very raison d'être is to rip open that perfect exterior and expose the flawed, primal women within.”

“This is all well and good,” Spence said, “but all you’re doing is creating a back story for someone you haven’t met so you don’t have to think such things about someone you have. It’s comfortable to you only because she’s still a fictional person, like anyone else you meet in the metaverse. I could create an equally persuasive story for Eamon using most of your elements. He has to work with professional women every day and he knows that even thinking about them in a sexual way undermines his own professionalism. It’s a constant battle for him to suppress the thoughts that come to him – to keep his mind focused on the job when all around him are women who go home and have sex with their partners just like every other human being on the planet does. It’s not desire itself which eats away at him – he doesn’t actually want any of these women – but the forbidden incongruity of this reality set against the completely nonsexual context of a primary school. He becomes secretly obsessed with it, and the only way he can compartmentalise these thoughts so that they don’t intrude upon the business of being a good head teacher is to transfer them to metaverse women. Pulling apart their professional personalities in this online, faraway world satisfies his itch just enough to make it something he can ignore when he’s at work.”

“He could satisfy that itch,” I said, “by just finding professional women online and having sex with them: no deception, no violation required. That would be another 90

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thing entirely. Why would he need to rape them? Why would he need to expose them by posting online their words and thoughts and sexual fantasies?”

“Come on,” he said. “All I need to do is turn up the volume on bitterness. Maybe he’s been rejected once by someone he viewed as ‘polished’. Maybe he tried to break through just a little – a half-joking comment about sex he regretted the moment it escaped him. He’s the boss, after all; you’re not allowed to be a human being when you’re the one with the power to fire someone. A single comment can get tongues wagging. Sexual harassment. He notices that the staff room occasionally goes quiet when he enters it. What was previously an obsession over the paradox of human sexuality set against politically correct professionalism becomes a source of genuine fear. What if someone catches him looking at a woman with non-professional thoughts behind his eyes? What if a child’s face and a woman’s breasts are perfectly lined up one day in his field of gaze and someone thinks he’s looking at the latter instead of the former? Are you saying such paranoia couldn’t exist?”

“You seem to be very familiar with the details of this scenario.”

“Ah,” he said. “The woman who outlines the hatred of another woman accuses the man who outlines the hatred of another man of empathising with him. You can do better than that, Thursday.”

I sighed. “I’m not saying it can’t exist. I’m saying that there are other possibilities.”

“Fine. So what if you meet Mrs Herriot and she’s every bit as kind and charming as her husband?” Spence 91

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asked me. “What then? You’re going to have to make the leap from one of these possibilities to actuality at some point, because someone is doing these things from a PC in the Herriot household – and you and I agreed we were going to do something about that.”

“Then let’s meet her,” I decided. “It’s not like that would be bad detective work, is it?”

“Agreed,” he said and started the car.

She left the house at about noon, climbing into her red Volkswagen Polo and driving off in the direction of town. We followed from a distance. She was a darkhaired woman; she wore it straight and shoulder-length.

She had on skinny jeans, tall boots, and a green and purple Orla Kiely raincoat.

She drove into town and parked in a pay and display.

We stood behind her at the machine, where she purchased two hours. Then we followed her to a coffee shop, where she met up with a woman who was sitting at a table with a sleeping toddler beside her in a pushchair. They kissed each other on both cheeks. Mrs Herriot took off her raincoat and put it round the back of the facing chair. Spence and I took a nearby table and sat side-by-side on the sofa; he took out his laptop and put it on the table in front of us so it wouldn’t look odd that we weren’t facing each other. Then he went to get us coffee.

It wasn’t noisy in the coffee shop; all the same, it was difficult to make out individual words from any distance away. The woman with the toddler stood and said something, to which Mrs Herriot nodded vigorously and said, “Of course!” Will you watch him for me a moment whilst I join the queue? Whilst I make a call? Whilst I 92

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use the loo? She headed for the toilets. The latter, then.

Spence came back with a latte for him and a skinny cappuccino for me. “Look at her, how blank her expression is now,” I commented to him, “compared to how it was when she was talking to that woman.”

“How do you want her to look when she’s not interacting with anyone?” he replied. “Should she have a book of poetry open in front of her and a thoughtful, reflective expression on her face?”

“Look at her eyes,” I said. “They’re anywhere but here.”

He shrugged. “So she’s thinking about other things.

That’s hardly a crime.”

“Any individual behaviour can have a thousand explanations,” I told him. “Our job is to join up the dots.”

“No picture forms from a single dot,” he replied.

The friend returned. She sat, opened her handbag, took out cream and rubbed some into her hands. Mrs Herriot smiled in the direction of the toddler and said something that made the other roll her eyes and reply with a sentence that contained the word ‘now’ emphasised in it. They both laughed. The friend bent over the buggy to check on something. The smile slid from Mrs Herriot’s face.

“See?” I said.

“And again I say, so what? Maybe she doesn’t like this person. Maybe it’s an old friend she feels obliged to keep up with, a passive aggressive acquaintance who counts the number of texts she gets in a month and then halves it when she tells everyone how little she matters.

Maybe – just maybe – Mrs Herriot had to cancel a 93

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meeting with her lover to be here.” I looked at him.

“Why not? Why are we assuming this to be a simple matter of a good person and a bad person – why shouldn’t it be mixed up a little?”

“This is pointless,” I said. “Why are we here?”

“Why indeed? You wanted to see her. But I get it now. I get why it was different for JP.” “I was in love with Inch then,” I told him. “I didn’t see anything clearly.”

“But he fit, didn’t he? Just like this woman of quickly fading smiles fits the general picture you’re looking for.

When you saw him for the first time, he was everything you wanted him to be: old and overweight and worn out. How dare such a man assume a character of vitality in the metaverse? How dare he pretend to be not old, not fat, not a person who got out of breath climbing the stairs to his apartment? The very sight of him made you sick. The very sight of him made you furious. This was the flesh behind the pretend man that Inch had chosen over you? If only she knew. If only she knew!”

“Please stop talking about this,” I said.

“Look at that fat woman over there by the window and tell me what you see,” he demanded. “Don’t stop to compose your words. Tell me what her story is and why she’s here by herself. I want to know.”

“How the hell would I know?” I replied, urging him through my forced whisper to lower his volume.

“Don’t edit!” he barked. A couple of heads turned in our direction. “What about the youth with the hoodie looking in through the door right now? You just know he’s wondering if they keep cash on the premises overnight, don’t you? What about the guy taking orders 94

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at the till – is it me or did he have a touch of yellow to his skin? You know, it’s his kind that are turning this glorious country into a state of woman-stoning, halalslaughtering, tower-block-destroying jihadists and if he was actually opposed to any of that he’d be sticking his head above the fucking parapet instead of hiding away from his kind in here, serving overpriced coffees – which, by the way, is a job that a proper English person could be doing.”

I got up, shaking. I picked up my coat and bag. He rose too, knocking the table and sending his latte to the floor. “And just look at that guy in the corner!” he shouted, pointing. “I do believe I just saw him twirling his fucking moustache!”

“Leave me alone!” I shrieked, backing – stumbling away. Customers were gasping. Men were standing.

The guy at the till came across and put himself between us, his arms stretched out, his palms open. “Calm down, alright, mate?” he said. “Just calm down. Just calm down.”

“Fuck this!” Spence spat. He slammed shut his laptop, picked it up and took a direct line to the main doors. He didn’t look back.

A hand touched gently my shoulder from behind.

“Are you ok? Did he hurt you?” Mrs Herriot handed me a tissue and stroked my hair back out of my face.

“It’s okay – he’s gone now. Come and sit down,” she said. Then she put her arms around me and held me whilst I sobbed.

“Is he alright?” the till guy said, presently. “Is he likely to come back? Should I call the police?”

“It’s okay, he won’t return,” I told him. “He made his 95

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point.”

Spence was waiting for me when I got back to the car ten minutes later. “So, did you get to speak with her?” he asked.

“I did,” I said, coldly.

“And? Theory supported? Hypothesis rejected?”

“She was lovely. It tells me nothing.”

“Of course it tells you nothing.” His voice went suddenly gentle. “Of course it tells you nothing.”

96

8 I finally got to meet Peter four days after I returned to the UK. In the interim, I got to spend a lot of time camming around the sim and listening to the chatter of my fellow queuers – none of whom seemed to think that there was any place on the island that could be used for building, though a couple had vague recollections of meeting people in the queue before who claimed to have been content creators.

The queue was ten people long on my second visit and thirteen at the start of my third. In the end, I decided to adopt the strategy I’d seen Twenty Pieces using and just keep myself logged in non-stop. I had two laptops anyway. I came to an agreement with the person immediately behind me – a much more accommodating queue member than Without Motorway had been on the issue of queue privileges – that they’d walk into my avatar and push it forwards a position if the queue significantly advanced in my absence. High-tech stuff. I agreed I’d do the same for the guy in front of me.

In the meantime, I met up with Stransky to debrief and plan new casework. He lived in and worked from a twobedroomed flat in Rochester. When he met up with clients, he did so in restaurants and coffee shops, often in central London. I had occupied his second bedroom for just over three months at the start of our working 97

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agreement in 2012, but as soon as I was able to I’d moved to a nearby studio apartment. I didn’t tell him I was still in his locality and every time we parted I’d walk to Chatham station and have coffee there until the next train to Waterloo East or Victoria had been and gone. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t trust him, but you never knew when a relationship would sour and Stransky had serious leverage. It wasn’t all one-way, of course: he knew that if he ever decided to tell the police about me then I’d make sure they were also informed that he’d been effectively harbouring a fugitive all this time. I was certain they’d be interested in learning the details of his business practice too.

When Peter started seeing people, a ‘friend’ would come down from the hill and sit in the little hut beside the gate. The first time I witnessed this it was Jessica, the female avatar I’d met on the beach at the start of my first visit.

After that, however, it was ‘Michael’, then ‘Patience’, then ‘Delo’. None of these people made any attempt to hush the chatter in the queue but neither did they join in with it. Neither were they absent: if you spoke to them in IM they would reply almost immediately. Each visitor session lasted about three hours and typically the queue would move forward by four or five places in this time. Then there would be a gap of anything from one hour to ten and the number of green dots on the map at or above the hilltop could be anything from one to six or seven. I was itching to know what they were doing up there. Meanwhile, the queue behind me continued to grow. The island was way under its prim limit and the gowns that everyone had to wear would have helped reduce the lag; there was space 98

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for a little more expansion yet, therefore, but if the line of people continued to grow at its present rate then eventually there was going to be a capacity issue.

Once I had set up in the queue indefinitely with my informal queuing agreement system, I took my second laptop out with me to a café and logged in on a different account. I went straight to Peter’s sim. First, I wanted to know what there was above the island beyond the height that I could reach from ground level with my camera; second, I wanted to know what would happen to people who broke the rules. So I didn’t bother with the robe and I took off into the air from the platform just as soon as I had rezzed. I flew first of all towards the top of the hill, homing in on the stone building at its peak. Within about 30 metres, predictably, I knocked up against an invisible ban-line. So I continued straight up from there, pausing only to cam inside the building briefly: my radar told me there were three people in the exact place I was looking, but the simple building appeared completely empty.

Then I got my first IM from the management.

Patience: Hello Case.

Patience: Please could you spend a moment looking at our sim rules?

Patience: I’ve just sent them to you on a notecard.

I declined it and continued upwards. The hill receded below me, and then the land completely vanished. I was alone in an endless blue void.

Patience: Case, you are breaking sim rules. Please 99

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come back down to ground level. We can talk on the beach.

I ignored the message, though I was intrigued that I hadn’t been threatened with ejection. Policers just love threatening ejection (though perhaps not quite so much as they love the actual act of ejecting). I reached two thousand metres and still there was nothing to see. My draw distance was maxed out on Firestorm viewer’s 1024 metre limit and I was zoomed out on my avatar so that I could see as much as possible around me, but not a single object came into view. I also had transparency mode activated so I’d be able to see anything invisible hidden in the sky – the project I was working on for Fred just before I’d had to flee from the Isle of Wight had taught me the value of utilising that – but no red-tinted objects appeared.

Patience: Case, you will be moved to a different area if you do not come down to the beach.

There it was, then. I wondered if I’d be able to get up to the build limit of four thousand metres in the time I had before she succumbed to her no-doubt itchy trigger finger. I reached 2.5k. Fifteen hundred metres to go.

Still nothing to see.

Patience: Case, this is your last warning. Please speak to me.

I decided to buy myself a little extra time.

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Case Belmont: Just taking a look around, ok?

Case Belmont: That’s not a crime.

Three thousand metres. Absolutely nothing to look at.

Still, I was in an empty space.

Patience: Case, our sim rules are no flying and we require you to wear a robe if you wish to visit.

Case Belmont: Why do I have to wear a robe?

Patience: Those are our rules. If you come down to the beach I can explain them to you.

Case Belmont: Can’t you explain them to me now?

Patience: No, Case. If you want to show me that you respect our rules, please come down to the beach.

Patience: Otherwise I will move you to a different area.

Three thousand five hundred metres. I was nearly there.

Case Belmont: Ok, I’ll come down.

Patience: Thank you.

Patience: Would you like me to send you a TP? Case Belmont: Yes please.

Patience: Thank you.

The TP arrived. I dismissed it.

Case Belmont: Did you send it yet?

Three thousand eight hundred metres. And there, a hundred metres above me, like a giant piece of graph paper, a builder’s platform came into view. It appeared to be empty, but was it? I recalled Fred’s comment about 101

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the storage device being miniaturised once it was complete. I tried to imagine just how small such a thing could be shrunk to. Twenty-five prims by twenty-five prims. The size of a standard default cube in SL was 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 metres, but it could be shrunk down to 0.01 x 0.01 x 0.01 metres. A 2D grid of 625 prims, therefore, could be shrunk to a flat square measuring 0.25 x 0.25 x 0.01 metres. But why stop at a 2D grid? A cuboid composed of 8 by 8 by 10 prims would hold 640 prims and measure just 0.08 x 0.08 x 0.10 metres. But that was if they were arranged neatly; there was no reason I could think of as to why they couldn’t be overlapped – in which case, the overall size of this virtual hard drive could even be as small as 0.01 x 0.01 x 0.01 metres: smaller than the iris of an eyeball.

Patience: Yes. Perhaps you clicked the wrong button.

Patience: I’ll send another.

Patience: Why are you still ascending?

Case Belmont: Stopped now.

Case Belmont: There’s a builder’s platform up here.

Patience: Yes, Case.

The second TP arrived. I dismissed it. I landed on the platform and started camming around. It was a hopeless task and after a few seconds I realised how stupid I was being and went into edit mode, defining large rectangles of space with my mouse and looking for the tell-tale yellow and blue outlines of any object highlighted there.

Case Belmont: What sort of stuff do you build?

Patience: I don’t build anything myself.

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Patience: My friends build things there for the island.

Patience: Did you get the TP? Case Belmont: Nope.

Case Belmont: Can I buy any of it on the Marketplace?

Patience: No, Case.

Patience: I think you are refusing my teleports.

I was seeing nothing, but the distance at which you can select objects in edit mode is lower than draw distance, so it wasn’t just a question of defining one enormous rectangle over the entire platform, which was so large it appeared to cover the entire sim. To do a thorough search would take ages.

Case Belmont: Why would I do that?

Case Belmont: So do you mean buildings and plants and stuff?

Patience: Case, please return to ground level.

Case Belmont: It’s just I’m interested in building.

Case Belmont: Do you work for Peter?

Patience: Peter is my friend.

Patience: I will have to move you to another area.

Patience: I’m sorry.

Case Belmont: Am I trying your patience, Patience?

A cheap remark, but I couldn’t resist. And then, just at the point where a new edit rectangle highlighted something tiny and distant, the platform was gone and I was in a different sim. It could have been a single, pine cube prim that I’d seen. It could have been anything.

But I wasn’t ejected to a random nearby region. A white floor appeared below and a white ceiling appeared 103

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above me, and both stretched off in all directions. A little way off was a wooden desk and behind it sat a bespectacled woman in a tweed suit, who – I swear to God – looked at me over the top of her glasses as I approached.

Mrs Crimson: Another naughty boy.

Mrs Crimson: Are you a boy? I can’t really tell.

Her avatar was engaged in a typing animation. In front of her on the desk was a 1940s typewriter, beautifully done in mesh (it had a land impact of one – one prim; I still can’t get my head around how different things are with mesh); behind her was a row of grey metal filing cabinets.

Case Belmont: Where am I? Mrs Crimson: Just a moment, whilst I take your details down.

Case Belmont: Why do you need my details?

Mrs Crimson: It’s just a small formality. We like to keep records.

Case Belmont: Records for what?

Mrs Crimson: Why do we keep records? Why, you might as well ask why the sky is blue.

Mrs Crimson: If no-one kept records, nothing would ever be remembered. That wouldn’t be right at all.

Mrs Crimson: Hold still please, whilst I take a photograph.

The default Polaroid snapshot sound clicked and whirred as my image was taken. Mrs Crimson’s avatar 104

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continued her typing.

Mrs Crimson: There we go. All done.

Case Belmont: Am I free to go?

Mrs Crimson: What a peculiar question. Of course you’re free to go.

Mrs Crimson: How on Earth do you suppose we might detain you?

Case Belmont: Why have I been brought here?

Mrs Crimson: You weren’t brought here, dear; you chose to come.

Mrs Crimson: Accordingly, you may also choose to leave.

Case Belmont: Supposing I don’t leave.

Mrs Crimson: Then I suppose in that case you would remain.

Case Belmont: And what will happen if I remain?

Mrs Crimson: It’s really not very complicated, dear; what will happen if you remain is you will not leave.

This space – this area – this centre of sorts stretched in all directions as far as I could see. A slight glow had been added to the white of the floor and ceiling and, presumably, the in-the-distance walls. We could have been in a tiny skybox or a building the width and breadth of the sim. I could have cammed out to establish these dimensions, but Mrs Crimson fascinated me too much for the moment.

Case Belmont: Is there anyone else here?

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choose to come here.

Mrs Crimson: I shall be certain to record their details.

Case Belmont: Can I go back to Peter?

Mrs Crimson: Not for 24 hours. You’ve been a naughty boy and naughty boys and girls need time to think about what they’ve done.

Case Belmont: What if I choose to be naughty here?

Mrs Crimson: You’re quite the inquisitive one, aren’t you?

Mrs Crimson: You can be naughty here if you please, though I really can’t see why you would bother.

Mrs Crimson: What exactly would it achieve?

Case Belmont: Sometimes, disorder is its own reward.

Mrs Crimson: Oh my poor dear. I very much doubt you have any conception of what true disorder actually looks like.

Mrs Crimson: You might not consider it quite so rewarding if you did.

A thought crossed my mind. Might this have been the place where the data storage device was built? Although I was no longer above Peter (the present sim was called ‘Ardeal’), perhaps this building had been located there previously.

Case Belmont: Can I build here?

Mrs Crimson: Another peculiar question. Does this look like a sandbox? Of course you can’t build here.

Case Belmont: What *can* I do here?

Mrs Crimson: That, of course, is entirely up to you.

Her obtuse answers were both intriguing and irritating.

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What was the function of this place? Why had I been brought here? Was I being punished? It felt a little like I was, but if so it had to be one of the mildest punishments ever devised. Was no-one going to lecture me for breaking Peter’s rules?

Case Belmont: What is your job here?

Mrs Crimson: Have you been paying no attention whatsoever? My job is to record people’s details.

Case Belmont: What is your job when you’re not recording people’s details?

Mrs Crimson: Why on Earth do you ask such inconsequential questions?

Case Belmont: I’m curious.

Mrs Crimson: Indeed you are.

Case Belmont: You haven’t answered my question.

Mrs Crimson: Why do you consider that I’m obliged to?

Case Belmont: Do you work for Peter?

Mrs Crimson: Peter is my friend.

Interesting.

Case Belmont: That’s what Patience said.

Mrs Crimson: Ah yes, Patience.

Mrs Crimson: Such a dear.

Mrs Crimson: Such a well-mannered young lady.

Mrs Crimson: I believe she just got engaged to a delightful young woman from Australia.

Case Belmont: Why do people want to meet Peter?

Mrs Crimson: If you want to know that, I can only suggest that you ask them.

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Mrs Crimson: Or perhaps you should ask yourself why you want to meet him.

Case Belmont: Do I want to meet him?

Mrs Crimson: Of course you do, my dear.

Mrs Crimson: Everyone is searching for Peter.

Mrs Crimson: Even if they don’t know it.

It didn’t look like Mrs Crimson was going anywhere any time soon, so I broke off the conversation momentarily to take a better look at my surroundings. The skybox – we were at two thousand five hundred metres – did indeed cover the entire 256 by 256 metre land mass of the sim, which was another private region surrounded by dark blue, inaccessible sea. Apart from myself and Mrs Crimson and her desk, typewriter and filing cabinets, however, it was completely empty. The two green dots on the map indicated that we were the only people on the sim.

I couldn’t see down to ground level. It would be difficult to access if there were no trap door exits from the skybox. I could have tried teleporting to a random position in the sim using the map, but the likelihood was that they’d set the landing point right back here. If I’d had editing rights, I could have sat on an object and then lowered it with me through the floor, then hopped off to fall to the ground. If I’d had build rights, I could have rezzed a cube and sat on it, and done likewise. If. Case Belmont: What’s down at ground level?

Mrs Crimson: The ground, of course.

Case Belmont: Can I go down and look?

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some other thing than that which is in front of you?

Case Belmont: You are the only thing that’s in front of me, Mrs Crimson.

Mrs Crimson: Indeed, that continues to be the case, Case.

I considered my tit at Patience well and truly tatted.

Case Belmont: heh Case Belmont: What is the purpose of this skybox?

Mrs Crimson: I would have thought that that was patently obvious, dear: it is the place in which I work.

Case Belmont: But why was I sent here?

Mrs Crimson: As I have already explained to you, it was you who chose to come.

Partly because my battery was getting low, partly because it was getting a little crowded in the café in which I was sitting, but mostly because I’d run out of questions to ask this strange woman, I decided to give up and go back to my flat. Without farewell, I returned Case to his home point, a skybox that Fred set up for me on a private island west of Nautilus.

But, before I logged out, I found Ardeal on the map and double clicked on a random spot to teleport back, just to confirm my expectation I would be returned to the white skybox and Mrs Crimson’s disapproving look rather than get sent to a spot down at ground level. In fact, neither of these two things happened.

Instead, I was automatically directed to a flat plane at three thousand, six hundred metres – a full one thousand, one hundred metres above where I’d been 109

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before. The plane was white and completely bare. A single 256 by 256 metre mega prim, it covered the entire sim, blocking the way down. The only way into Mrs Crimson’s skybox and company, it appeared, was by being ejected from Peter.

On the evening of the next day, I was finally at the front of the queue. Sixteen people were now lined up behind me and the atmosphere was one of increasing excitement.

One queuer in particular appeared convinced that Peter was the second coming of Christ and was singing hymns in voice. In any other context, I’d have found this both embarrassing and irritating to listen to. Something about the build-up to this moment, however, made it sweet and beautiful and joyful.

The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want; He makes me down to lie In pastures green; He leadeth me The quiet waters by.

I remembered singing that hymn at primary school, sitting crossed legged in rows with other children on the hall floor. In place of ‘pastures’ I’d heard ‘pastas’ and couldn’t understand why God would make people lie down in green pasta (which I assumed was the same pasta they made ravioli with on Wednesday lunchtimes, so I had an image in my head of lying down in green ravioli). I supposed it was something divine which would one day make sense.

My soul He doth restore again, 110

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And me to walk doth make Within the paths of righteousness, E’en for His own name’s sake.

A blue gingham dress in the summer, a grey pleated skirt in the winter and autumn. You sat crossed-legged in a skirt and it made a little ledge in your lap. In the summer on the field we’d store daisies there whilst we chained them together.

Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale, Yet will I fear no ill; For Thou art with me, and Thy rod And staff me comfort still.

Sung to the upright piano pulled in front of the wall bars, beside the tallest floor-to-ceiling curtains I had ever seen.

In the spring, a vase with daffodils would be placed on the table at the front of the hall and we’d be told about birth and new life.

My table Thou hast furnished In presence of my foes; My head Thou dost with oil anoint, And my cup overflows.

My eyes pricked with tears.

And then the gate opened in front of me, and Delo, from her place in the little wooden hut, made her one intrusion into public chat.

Delo: Disco, you may go through now.

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Delo: Peter is waiting for you at the top of the hill.

Goodness and mercy all my life Shall surely follow me, And in God’s house forevermore My dwelling-place shall be.

I walked through the gate.

112

9 Spence and I had found a nearby pub to wait in. I nursed a pint of Guinness whilst he drank yet more latte.

The amount of coffee that man got through was frightening.

We made a few comments about the décor and the food menu. Then he said, “So. Herriot. I suppose the question is do we want to deliver a punishment or a warning?”

“We haven’t yet established which of the Herriots it is,” I commented, adding quickly, “or even if it is one of them.”

“It’s one of them,” he said. “I still expect it to be the husband, though it doesn’t really matter either way.”

“What if it’s one of their children?” I asked. “The oldest is – what? – fourteen? Kids these days are getting sexualised younger and younger.”

“Are you being serious? The Notecard Guy started over five years ago. You’re imagining an eight year old doing this?”

I felt like an idiot. “Right. Yes, of course. So… what would constitute a ‘punishment’?”

“If our client had actually gone to the police,” he mused, “I suppose punishment might constitute handing over our evidence to them.”

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actually done anything then they would have found out exactly what we’ve found out anyway.”

He nodded. “So why don’t they go to the police?”

“Because however exposed they’ve been,” I replied, “it’s still their online identity that’s been violated rather than their real life identity.”

“Right.

And any case brought to court could potentially attract media attention and make public their online life and activity.” He nodded again. “See? JP was wrong to say anything RL should be left to the police. People are too scared to use them.”

“Is there actually a law that’s being broken here?”

“A law specific to cybercrime? Of course not. It’ll be ages before the government gets its head around all that.

But there are plenty of other laws which could in theory be put to use in cases like this. There’s the Protection from Harassment Act, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, the Communications Act and the Malicious Communications Act. It would require work, but charges could be brought with enough dedication. And expense.”

“Imagine having to talk about it all in court, though.

Imagine being cross-examined over it.”

“Well yes,” Spence said. “Quite.”

“What other punishment options exist, then?” I asked him.

“An eye for an eye,” he replied. “We do to the Notecard Guy what the Notecard Guy did to others.”

“Impersonate him and fuck his wife?”

“Exactly. In the virtual sense, of course.”

I looked at him carefully. He looked at me back.

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innocent victim,” I said slowly, “how exactly do you suppose we would go about that in RL?” He rubbed his chin and thought for a moment. “How about we steal his phone and sex text his wife.”

“Are you being serious?”

“Why not? What’s wrong with the idea?”

“You imagine women go weak at the knees just like that when they receive a dirty text? Even if those two have done sexting before – and there’s absolutely no guarantee that they have, or have done regularly, or have done and enjoyed it, or have done it in any more indepth a manner than just horny message foreplay as a prelude to the real thing later- You know what? There’s just so much wrong with this idea I can’t even continue.”

“I wasn’t suggesting the implementation wouldn’t require some finesse and contrivance,” he said, a little defensively.

“In any case,” I added, “it’s moot: I’m not going to do to her what he did to others – or do to him what she did to others if it should turn out that you’re wrong and it’s Mrs we’re after instead of Mr.” “I of course agree that we shouldn’t be fighting rape with rape,” he stated. “Naturally, this is just a logical consideration of the possibilities.”

“Are you seriously defining rape as a ‘logical possibility’…?” I asked him.

“Don’t make this personal, Thursday,” he replied.

“We have to examine this from all angles.”

I wanted to punch him in the face, but instead I sighed and shook my head. “So, a warning then?”

“Wait. We’re not done exploring punishment just yet.

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behaviour and post it all online.”

“And leave ourselves open to a defamation lawsuit.”

“We’d do it anonymously, of course. He’s welcome to hire an investigator to track us down.”

I hesitated. “Still…” I said. “I don’t know.”

“What’s the problem?”

“If we do something like that he’s going to lose his job, isn’t he? He has dependents. He’s a good head teacher.”

Spence wagged his finger at me. “We don’t actually know that last bit at all,” he told me. “Not from a ten minute tour.”

“The school had a good inspection report.”

“Let’s take a moment to remind ourselves what this guy does: he stalks women online, he breaks into their partners’ accounts, he violates them in the first instance by impersonating their partner and having cybersex with them and then – as if that’s not enough – he violates them further by making everything he gets out of that encounter public.”

“He doesn’t post photos,” I reminded him. “We know some of those accounts he broke into had real life photos in their inventories of the women he had sex with. He didn’t post them.”

“He didn’t post them because if he’d done so then their RL privacy would have been breached and they might just have decided they no longer had anything left to lose by going to the police. Don’t think that was some sort of act of magnanimous generosity, Thursday. He was simply covering his arse.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, “we still don’t know it’s actually him!”

“We’re assuming it’s him for the sake of argument.

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What we’re discussing right now is what we’re going to do.” He stabbed the last few words into a beer mat with his index finger.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “I don’t want to hurt his family.”

“If you were a mother and you knew this about this head teacher,” he asked me. “would you send your child to his school?”

“That’s not fair, Spence. We know that people have private lives; we know that nobody’s perfect; we accept that the whole person isn’t necessarily going to be as smooth-edged in their own time as they present when they’re at work. People’s private lives are nothing to do with their professional lives.”

“That’s bullshit,” he said. “We’re not talking about someone who masturbates to porn in their own time; we’re talking about someone who is breaking the law; we’re talking about someone who actively, intentionally and systematically harms other people. Should a guy like that be running a school?”

I threw my hands up. “No. No I guess he shouldn’t.”

“Part of the problem we have here,” Spence said, “is that you don’t think this is actually all that serious. If this guy was a rapist in real life you wouldn’t hesitate to take him down.”

My eyes narrowed at him. “I do think it’s serious, but I don’t think it’s as serious as actual, real life rape, no.

No woman has been made by him to fear for her life. No woman has been left by him torn and bleeding.”

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say. So let me draw a different comparison. What if he was a head teacher who occasionally pats his female colleagues on the rear or squeezes their breasts – the sort of behaviour we’re now hearing on the news was ‘the way things were’ back in the 1960s and 1970s, except we’re retrospectively prosecuting people for these acts anyway. Would that be something you’d act on?”

“If he was doing that now,” I said, “then… I guess… well, yes.”

“So consider by comparison the degree of violation going on here. I’m not asking you for ratings out of ten, Thursday, but wouldn’t you agree that Notecard’s behaviours are at least as bad as that?”

I sighed. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I would.”

“And that’s before you get to all the ripple effects.

Guys out there are lauding Notecard’s ‘work’: he’s reinforcing all their women-hating beliefs and who’s to say one of them won’t go out and actually rape someone?

Who’s to say the virtual world won’t one day cease to be sufficient for him and he goes out and actually rapes someone. I like that you challenge me, Thursday; I really do,” he told me, “but we have to at least be agreed that these things are real and serious, and that someone has to do something about them.”

“A family will be broken,” I said.

“The children of criminals always were the additional victims of their parents’ crimes,” he replied. “It is as it is and as it always was. Why should it be any different for the metaverse?”

“Then we let the police do this. We gather everything together and send it to the people who have systems for dealing with this sort of thing and its fallout.”

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He let out an exasperated sigh and sat back. “Okay fine. I’d agree to that in principle, but I am eighty – no, ninety – per cent certain they’ll do nothing, because no charges are being pressed. There is no direct law being broken here, Thursday. You can’t invoke a harassment law if no-one complains about being harassed. It’s not like arson is being committed.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. If they do nothing then we’ll take action.”

“But what action? That’s all I’m asking here.”

“We’ll send him a copy of our evidence and tell him we’ll make it public if he doesn’t change his online behaviour.”

“Okay, but now we’re talking warning rather than punishment.”

“Fine.

Then we’re talking warning rather than punishment.”

He shook his head. “No. We’re not going to just let him off with a warning. Not after what he’s done. You disappoint me.”

“He has two children, Spence,” I insisted. “How do we justify ruining their lives for the sake of the avengement of crimes that no-one’s even bothered to report.”

“They got reported to us!” Spence cried. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you? It used to!” He rubbed his forehead and screwed up his eyes. “Can I remind you that it was you who wanted back then to find out who Notecard was in RL?” “I was hot-headed and stupid,” I said. “And I didn’t realise there might be kids involved. I didn’t think any of it through. If it were just him or even if it were just 119

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him and his wife then I’d be with you all the way, but it’s different when there are kids mixed up in it all – it just is.

We’d probably be taking their dad away from them.

We’d almost certainly be plunging them into financial hardship. We’d without doubt be throwing them into a life of shame. It’s a whole new can of worms and I never thought about it properly. Actually, JP was right about RL stuff. We’re in over our head on this.”

“You think ‘we’ are in over our heads?” Spence asked, his eyebrows raised. “I assure you your use of the first person plural there is quite unnecessary.

I’m experiencing no moral angst. Had it ever occurred to you that you’re doing those kids more harm than good by turning a blind eye to this?”

“I didn’t suggest we’d do nothing.”

“You think it’s better for them to live in ignorant innocence than to know the ugly truth; is that it? You’d rather they grew up thinking their father an upstanding pillar of society, an example for all, a role-model for young people everywhere to look up to?”

“What if,” I proposed, “he actually is all those things?

What if every single element of his observable, real life behaviour is exactly that? What if the online world is the only place where dark thoughts come to him and turn his actions bad, but in the real world he’s a model of putting others first? If you only ever see the good half, is there any meaningful difference between living with someone who’s fifty per cent saint and someone who’s a hundred?”

“You’re throwing a hypothetical extreme in my face as though it’s a real counter-argument,” Spence said, dismissively.

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“A hypothetical extreme would be more extreme than that,” I countered. “I’d make out he saved somebody’s life in RL every single day.”

“Like a fire fighter or a doctor? Would you overlook a fire fighter murdering someone because he saves lives on a daily basis? Is there some sort of deal whereby you get to kill someone so long as you’ve saved enough saving people up: save twenty lives, end one free? Don’t talk such bollocks; it’s a hypothetical extreme because you’re suggesting that Notecard’s regular, frequent, consistent, intentional, brutally violating behaviour could be so securely hidden as to be non-existent in its impact on those who aren’t aware of it. I reject your hypothesis.

The onus is on you to prove that a known behaviour can have no impact rather than on me to prove that it can.”

“The issue under discussion,” I said, “is whether breaking up this family would have a damaging impact on the well-being of these children. How is your suggestion that nothing but good could come from it not a hypothetical extreme?”

“I’m offering it as the counter argument to your equally extreme suggestion that nothing but bad could come from it – and a bad so bad that it exceeds every crime Mr Herriot has committed, not to mention those he might go on to commit in the future or those others might commit under influence of his poison. There is such a thing as the long-term good to think about here.

Nobody’s suggesting there won’t be any short-term pain.

What I’m saying is, Thursday, that it’s our job to deliver the fucking consequence, not to try to figure out, evaluate or otherwise judge the consequences of the consequence.”

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I looked him in the eye.

Stransky,” I said.

“You really are Step

At ten o’clock, we left the pub and parked two doors down from the Herriots’ on the other side of the road.

“Tinhat will text me when the house gets connected to SL,” he told me.

“Will he be able to tell us what region they’re in?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Possibly. Why?” “I want to log in on your laptop. We’ll tether it to one of our phones. I want to talk to him. I want to talk to Notecard.”

“What do you want to talk to him about?”

“About the economic crisis. What do you think I want to talk to him about?”

He turned to me. “I don’t want you scaring him off.”

“It’s not my intention to scare him off,” I told him. “I just want to talk to him.”

“Well I don’t know that Tinhat will be able to extract a user name,” he said. “So if it’s a busy sim, we won’t know which avatar he is.”

“But presumably there’s a good likelihood that he’s in a recently created avatar.”

“Not necessarily. There’s always the possibility that he does have a ‘main’ account. In any case, what if he’s at a welcome point where every avatar’s a newbie?”

“What if he’s not?”

We waited for just over half an hour, and then Stransky’s phone dinged. “He’s on,” he said, looking at the screen. “A sim called Bongum.”

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my phone to the cigarette lighter and set it up to tether.

“What if it’s Mr and Mrs?” “That idea does intrigue me,” he said, “but only because it would represent a new first.” He opened his laptop and paused. “I’m not happy about the light in here that the screen’s going to create.”

“Log into Facebook,” I told him. “If anyone walks by we’ll switch over and laugh at the pictures of cats. What if he has a multiple personality disorder?”

“What if he’s a malfunctioning robot?” he replied. We waited for the laptop to boot.

“What if they have someone staying with them, a down-and-out dependent who’s bitter about the world?

How are we going to find out who it actually is in any case?”

“Once of us,” Spence replied, “is going to take a look through a window.”

“That’s it?” I said. “That’s your big plan?”

“I never called it big.”

“There’s this new privacy device I heard about,” I told him. “It’s called curtains.”

“You’d be surprised how few people actually do draw their curtains fully. Or at all. A crack is all we need.

That and my twenty megapixel SLR with its 75 to 300 millimetre telephoto zoom lens.” He retrieved it from the bag behind his seat and held it up for me to see.

Silhouetted, it looked like a large cock and balls.

Symbolically, it probably was.

“You have all the toys,” I said.

“When I say one of us will look through a window, by the way, I of course mean you.”

“A good learning opportunity?”

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“Precisely. Also, this is something I think you need to see with your own eyes.”

I logged in on the laptop, setting Bongum as my start point. I used a new account I’d created just a few days earlier. A wooded scene rezzed around me. Slowly.

“Great,” I said. “We’re on a 3G connection and I have to materialise in a forest.”

“There’s only five other avatars in the sim, though,” Spence noted. “Of course, we don’t know for sure that Notecard’s one of them. He might have left by now.”

I cammed around and found the other visitors one by one: Archangel Thomas, a two year old herculean avatar with an upper body like an upside-down pyramid of Giza and a skin the colour of Victorian brickwork. He was topless, covered in tattoos, had long, black hair and studs in his ears. His profile declared him to be partnered to Bunny May, whose own profile picture was a pink and fluffy study of a blonde with massive hips and a gap between her legs you could drive a Ford Transit through. Archangel, it turned out, was the owner of the sim. His picks offered the following wisdom on drama: “Don’t bring your shit here; I haven’t got a fuck left to give about it.”

Wendy Wellington, a three month old who looked like she’d been in SL for a great deal longer. Her profile confirmed this: “Not new to SL. Starting over. Here to enjoy what SL has to offer.” Her mesh pants and tank hadn’t yet rezzed, so I saw her as a floating head and pair of arms. She was not partnered. She also chose to enlighten profile visitors with her views on drama.

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completely blank, except for a profile picture that looked like it could have been taken five minutes earlier. He wore blue jeans and a green, chunky pullover. A nice, short, hairstyle. No partner.

Croydon Paravane. Seven years old. He looked like he’d teleported to the forest direct from the catwalk. He had rings, wristbands, sunglasses and every other detail you could think of added to him, though most were not yet coloured in. His profile listed a number of projects he was involved in around the metaverse, including modelling for several SL fashion and lifestyle magazines.

His partner – Edith Cynthia – was the chief editor of one of them. Her portrait was stunning. This was our target.

It had to be.

Turner Wantmore. The token newbie; six days old. He was also topless. His avatar looked a little like it had been over-inflated using a foot pump. He walked around without AO and generally went from point A to point B in a straight line, regardless. His profile was completely blank.

“If Notecard is one of these avatars,” I said, “I’m guessing it’s Sam.” Stransky nodded. “Agreed. Note the gender nonspecific name. Remember, he raises funds for his avatar outfits by dancing as a female.”

“And I’d say Croydon is his target.”

“Possibly. We’re assuming quite a lot here, though.”

“They’re just a few metres away from each other.”

“Could still be a coincidence.”

“You saw his partner’s profile.”

“Actually,” he commented, “I read that magazine from time to time.” I looked at him, surprised. “It pays to 125

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keep up with the fashions,” he explained.

“But not to follow them, clearly.”

“An unassuming avatar attracts little attention,” he told me. “Think of me as a metaverse Columbo.”

“Columbo didn’t go round peering through people’s windows,” I remarked. “What windows do you want me looking in, anyway? There’s a street lamp right outside their house.”

“We’re parked two doors down for a reason,” he said.

“See this alley here?” He pointed across the road. “It leads to a park sat right behind all these properties.”

“You want me to climb over their back fence?”

“It’s a good, sturdy fence. Easy to climb and it shouldn’t make too much noise. The wind will mask any small sounds you do make.”

“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” I said.

“Of course I have. Twice.”

The area around my avatar had now finally achieved some sort of visual coherence. I dropped the draw distance right down to 32 metres and set graphics quality to low.

Sam and Croydon were about sixty metres away. I wondered over to them. When I got within chat range, I was relieved to see they were talking in public chat. It would make things easier.

Sam Turner: I don’t envy you your schedule.

Croydon Paravane laughs.

Croydon Paravane: Yeah, it can be a little intense at times.

Sam Turner: So what’s Edith up to tonight?

Croydon Paravane: She’s at a fashion event.

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Croydon Paravane: She wasn’t intending to cover it herself, but her fashion editor had to pull out to take care of a real life crisis.

Sam Turner: The buck stops with her, I guess.

Croydon Paravane: Indeed it does.

Croydon Paravane: I’ve never known someone to accept such things without complaint as Edith does.

Croydon Paravane: I have to confess, it would annoy the hell out of me.

Sam Turner: I guess it would me too, though I like to think I’d reach a philosophical viewpoint without too much grumbling.

Sam Turner: Hey Case.

Case Belmont: Hi Sam, Croydon.

Croydon Paravane: Yeah. If you can’t ultimately deal with stuff like that, why go into management?

Croydon Paravane: Hi there Case.

Case Belmont: Hope you guys don’t mind me intruding.

Sam Turner: Not at all.

Croydon Paravane: No problem, Case.

Case Belmont: I just wondered where you got your hair from, Sam. Sam Turner: Good question! Let me have a look.

Croydon Paravane: Actually, I can answer that. It’s Pipe.

Croydon Paravane: Modelled it a few months back.

Sam Turner: So it is!

Croydon Paravane: I have so much hair in my inventory.

Sam Turner: Do you get it for free?

Croydon Paravane: Most of the time, yes.

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Croydon Paravane: It’s a hard life.

Sam Turner laughs.

“This is all very interesting, I’m sure,” said Stransky, “but a public street at night-time on a lap-top with only fifty per cent battery remaining isn’t really the place for such exploratory chit-chat.”

“You should have got a better battery,” I said. “It’ll look good next to your telephoto zoom lens.”

Case Belmont: You are a model, Croydon?

Croydon Paravane: From time to time.

Croydon Paravane: My partner edits an SL magazine.

Croydon Paravane: She likes me to look tip-top, and I figured I might as well make some money out of it.

Sam Turner: I keep meaning to ask – when did you guys meet?

Croydon Paravane: Me and Edith? At a sculpture exhibition I’d organised.

Sam Turner: Sculpture? Your own work?

Croydon Paravane: Oh no. I gave up trying to keep up with building once sculpties came in.

Croydon Paravane: I’m sure I could learn it, but I just don’t have the time.

Sam Turner nods.

Croydon Paravane: I was events manager at the time for a gallery, and thinking about starting up my own.

Croydon Paravane: Edith was editing a different magazine at the time – not as high profile as METALIFE – and she’d come to cover the opening.

Sam Turner: She’s edited other magazines?

Croydon Paravane: Oh sure. It’s her passion.

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Croydon Paravane: She was effectively head-hunted for METALIFE when the old editor stepped down.

Croydon Paravane: She has such high standards for design and layout.

Croydon Paravane: She does all the InDesign stuff herself. Actually, that was a bit of an issue when she took over at METALIFE. Croydon Paravane: She had real issues with the existing designer’s use of white space.

Croydon Paravane: He ended up resigning in a huff.

Croydon Paravane: Which she was delighted about.

Sam Turner laughs.

Sam Turner: Pages too busy?

Croydon Paravane: Way too busy Croydon Paravane: Though, in fairness, nothing like as bad as some publications.

Sam Turner: I’ve seen some that still use Comic Sans.

Croydon Paravane: Right! It’s astonishing how little research some ‘designers’ do.

Croydon Paravane: Since she took over, METALIFE’s circulation has increased by nearly fifty per cent.

Sam Turner: She’s not tempted to start up her own magazine?

Croydon Paravane: She has talked about that.

Croydon Paravane: It would certainly be more lucrative for her from the point of view of advertising revenue.

Croydon Paravane: As it is, her salary’s a pittance.

Croydon Paravane: L$20,000 per issue, which is about $80 real money.

Croydon Paravane: For a month’s work.

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though.

Croydon Paravane: Absolutely. But if it was her own mag then she’d get to keep the profits.

Sam Turner: So she’s going to do it?

Croydon Paravane: No. Not now, at least.

Croydon Paravane: Not the right time.

Croydon Paravane: She sees SL as dying out.

Case Belmont: A lot of people talking like that right now.

Croydon Paravane: She’s not a doom-monger, Case.

Croydon Paravane: But you have to face facts: it’s nearly ten years old.

Croydon Paravane: And Rod Humble seems determined to develop Linden in every direction other than the one it actually has a skillset in.

Sam Turner: I’m with her on this totally.

Sam Turner: It’s like taking over a car manufacturer and deciding to take it into the music industry.

Croydon Paravane laughs.

Croydon Paravane: I’d say it’s more like taking over a car manufacturer and deciding to take it into the bicycle industry – but yes I take your point.

Sam Turner laughs.

Case Belmont: It’s all academic anyway.

Case Belmont: The world’s going to end in December, I understand.

Croydon Paravane: lol Sam Turner laughs.

Sam Turner: If it could just end a couple of days before I have to conduct all my employee performance reviews, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

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“Look how he’s presenting himself,” I said to Stransky.

“Professional, successful, intelligent, assertive: he’s flattering Croydon with a reflection of the very image he broadcasts of himself.”

“How affirming it must be,” he murmured back, “to meet the sort of person you imagine yourself to be and find that they like you and want to spend time talking with you.”

“And not only is he attracting Croydon’s friendship, he’s virtually practising how to be him at the same time.”

“All the while very subtly milking him for information about his partner.” He looked at me. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “I want to speak to him – the real him – but I don’t know right now how to go about that.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘the real him’,” Stransky said, “any more than there’s such a thing as a single real you or a single real me. Every person is a collection of personalities.”

“Alright then,” I said patiently, “I want to speak to the him that you’re convinced undermines the goodness of the him that runs a primary school.”

“It’s not about whether X undermines Y or the value of X as opposed to Y or the magnitude of Y compared to criterion Z; it’s about action A resulting in consequence B. You can have this conversation with them at any time; could you please consider getting these photographs done before someone calls the police about us?”

I sighed.

Case Belmont: Sorry guys, gotta go AFK for a few.

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Sam Turner: No worries, Case.

Croydon Paravane: Okay, Case.

“Keep that session going,” I told Spence, handing him the laptop and taking off my seatbelt. “I want to read the chat log when I get back.”

He grunted. “I’ll put my coat over the screen.” He passed me the camera. “Make sure you get the right house.”

“I can count to three,” I reassured him. “I’ll be back in five minutes anyway since he’s bound to have drawn the curtains fully.”

I pulled my bag from the footwell of the car onto my lap and retrieved from it my recently acquired electrical stun gun.

“Protection from muggers?” he asked, looking at it.

“Protection from you,” I replied. I opened the door and got out.

The park, of course, was not empty. A group of six or seven young people were hanging around in a small skate park installed in the far corner, a couple of them standing at the top of a graffitied half-pipe. Luckily, this was a good eighty or so metres away and the street lamp was out at the point where the alley I’d taken from the road entered the park. I was in darkness; furthermore, a row of trees stood between the path encircling the park and the backs of the houses’ fences. I slipped quickly behind it.

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climb, and the construction was solid and silent under my weight. I dropped down lightly onto a lawn on the other side.

The Herriots’ garden was wide and open, with a few bushes and shrubs around the edges. There was a shed in the corner and a trampoline in the middle of the grass.

I crept across to a patio with a table and chairs. The house opened onto it through a set of French doors, the kitchen door and another set of French doors in the added-on conservatory.

The curtains on the other side of all of the house doors were all tightly shut. Of course they were. The conservatory had no curtains, but was in darkness.

Peering through the glass, I could see that it was open to a dining room, the door to which was shut.

The only other window was a small, square window between the house patio doors and the kitchen. It was at about the height of my forehead and almost certainly the window to a downstairs toilet. Silently, I picked up one of the chairs and moved it to below this window, then stepped up onto it to look through.

Bingo. It was indeed the downstairs toilet, the open door to which led to the hall, across from which was an open door into an office, where someone was sitting in front of a computer screen. It was an almost perfect line of view. I pressed the camera lens flat against the glass of the window to reduce shake. Once I was looking through the viewfinder on full zoom, I could see Second Life maximised across the monitor; I could see it so clearly I could almost read the text.

And I could see that it was Eamon Herriot sitting in front of it.

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He was leaning forward very slightly, peering intently at the screen, where Sam Turner, Croydon Paravane and my very own Case Belmont stood. He typed something, then he picked up a pen next to his keyboard and wrote something down on a notepad.

Then he typed something more. He brought up Croydon’s profile and then Edith Cynthia’s, picked up his pen again and added some more notes. He shut both boxes down and typed something. He leaned back for a moment. He picked up the pen and tapped it a few times on his leg.

In other words, he was researching.

Suddenly, he sat forward again. Something was in the top-right corner of his screen. An IM box opened. He read. Then his hand moved to the mouse and Case became centred on the screen. Herriot opened up my avatar’s profile. “Stransky, you idiot,” I whispered.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I reached into my pocket to call him, then remembered that my phone was sitting on the dashboard of his car and acting as a tether for his laptop.

An exchange took place in the IM box. One entry, two, three, four; I strained to make the text out, but it was just too small for me to see.

But that didn’t mean that the camera couldn’t see it, I realised, remembering Stransky’s mega-pixel pride. I made sure the flash was off then set a high ISO. Holding my breath and keeping the camera as steady as possible, I focused on the screen and took a picture.

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picture showing the PC screen, and then specifically honed in the IM box there.

Case Belmont: I know you, Notecard Guy. Sam Turner: Sorry Case?

Case Belmont: You’re the prick who hijacks guys’ accounts to screw their partners.

Sam Turner: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Sam Turner: Are you sure you’ve got the right window?

Case Belmont: Well it’s funny you should mention windows.

Case Belmont: I’m looking through one of yours right now, Eamon Herriot.

“Oh Fuck!” My heart thudded to a sudden halt. I looked back through the window. The office at the end of the hall was empty now, the chair Herriot had been sitting in was rotating.

And then the kitchen light came on.

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10 On the other side of the gate, the path at Peter wound briefly around a small pond and then started a slow, upward spiral around the hill. The moment I stepped through, everyone behind me in the queue vanished and the hymns of the singing woman stopped; not only was this parcel configured to block outsiders from seeing the avatars in it, it appeared, but it was also configured to block insiders from seeing and hearing the avatars outside. Nothing else changed as I crossed the line; there was no dramatic change of lighting or any introduction of streamed music, (though possibly the background sounds of birds and crickets and bees became just a little bit quieter); I was suddenly quite alone, however, and I felt it.

I didn’t cam up to the top of the hill. I let the world this side of the invisible barrier reveal itself to me, detail by detail. I felt this was the right thing to do.

It wasn’t a particularly long walk. I came to the top of the hill in about a couple of minutes. Peter was outside the stone building waiting for me.

Peter: Greetings, Disco.

Disco Friendly: Hello Peter.

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avatar was of average height and skinny in build. His hair was brown flecked with grey. He wore a mesh head and his face had the drawn, slightly worn-out look of a man approaching his sixties.

Peter: It’s a beautiful day, don’t you think?

Disco Friendly: You mean here in SL or where you are in RL? Peter: Either. Neither. Possibly both. It doesn’t really matter, so long as at least one of the answers is yes.

Disco Friendly: In that case: yes.

Disco Friendly: Yes it is.

Peter smiles.

Peter: I am, of course, delighted to hear it.

Peter: I haven’t met you before.

Peter: Another new visitor. There are more and more every day.

Peter: What things bring you here?

Disco Friendly: Um… Disco Friendly: I saw a queue… and I joined it.

Peter: Really? Is that how it works for you?

Peter: You just go around looking for queues to join?

Disco Friendly: No… but where I see a long queue I wonder what might be at the end of it.

Peter: Well it’s really not all that long a queue.

Peter: What are we up to now? Fifteen? Sixteen?

Peter: In the world of queues that’s surely no more than a bus stop.

Disco Friendly: In the world of Second Life queues, it’s a Wimbledon.

Peter: That is a very good point.

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actual queue – as in a line of people – in Second Life before.

Peter: Are you telling me that, in a world where you can fly and teleport and materialise things out of thin air, a simple queue of people is the thing that raises your eyebrows?

Disco Friendly: I suppose I am.

Peter: Well that has to be something, then.

Peter: That has to be something worth thinking about, wouldn’t you say?

Disco Friendly: I’d say I still want to know what’s at the end of it.

Peter: Well that would be me. Just me.

Peter: Me and my little house here.

Peter: Would you like to come inside?

Disco Friendly: Will it amaze me?

Peter: Is it necessary for you to be amazed in order for your wait to have been worthwhile?

Peter: It would be a shame if you had to go back down disappointed.

Disco Friendly: Not necessary, no.

Peter: Good. Because it won’t amaze you.

Peter: After all, I wouldn’t want it to overshadow the much more amazing thing that you just spent all those hours in that queue when you didn’t have to… to meet a man you knew nothing about.

Peter: Now *that* is amazing.

Disco Friendly: The people in the queue said you were very wise.

Peter: Did they now?

Peter: I’m sure there are many wise people within five minutes’ walk of wherever it is you are in the world.

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Peter: Have you ever queued to see any of them?

Disco Friendly: I have to admit, I have not.

Peter: Interesting.

Disco Friendly: Someone back down in the queue was saying you’re the second coming.

Peter: Of Christ?! Well that’s certainly a step up from just ‘wise’!

Peter: Why would Christ return as an avatar?

Disco Friendly: Her theory, not mine.

Peter: Suppose – just for a moment – that it was your theory. Why return as an avatar?

Disco Friendly: Well… I suppose it would be a good way of connecting with a large number of people.

Peter smiles.

Peter: So, do you like my sim? Do you like how we did the place?

Disco Friendly: It’s beautiful. Detailed, but… understated.

Peter: Well you see that’s pretty much how nature works.

Peter: You should see this place in the Oculus Rift, though. Amazing.

Peter: Apparently, this house here is something they’re calling ‘Rift-optimised’. It has something to do with its dimensions; I’m not sure what, exactly.

Peter: Non-optimised spaces are too ‘roomy’, I’m told.

Peter: But I do like that phrase – Rift optimised.

Peter: I wonder how long it will be before the words get joined together somehow. Roftimised…

Roptimised… Riftimised… What do you think?

Disco Friendly: I think they’re idiots for missing the potential of Oculoptimised.

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Peter smiles.

Peter: Another very good point.

Peter: In fairness, I don’t think they had the future evolution of their phrase in mind when they created it.

Disco Friendly: Why don’t you use a scripted queuing system? I’m sure there must be several on the MarketPlace?

Peter: That wouldn’t really meet our needs.

Disco Friendly: You’re trying to keep scripts to a minimum to reduce lag?

Peter: Well we are trying to do that too, but that isn’t the reason why we don’t use a scripted system.

Peter: I suppose you could say that the present queueing arrangement is more than just a manner of organising people.

Disco Friendly: I understand.

Peter: You do?

Disco Friendly: It’s a way of making people feel invested in their subsequent time with you.

Peter: Interesting. You actually *do* understand.

Peter: I normally have to explain that bit.

Peter: People tend to assume it’s an eccentricity of mine.

Disco Friendly: It’s an application of cognitive dissonance theory.

Peter: It is?

Disco Friendly: Ah… And now that I mention it, I realise that the whole Crimson woman thing is to.

Peter: Is it?

Disco Friendly: You’re not familiar with the theory?

Peter: Well I might be familiar with the underlying principles…

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Peter: But, of course, one person’s Cognitive Dissonance theory is another person’s Balance theory.

Peter: Give or take.

Peter: What’s interesting is that we don’t seem to have a record of you visiting Mrs Crimson.

Peter: And I know how efficient she is at keeping records.

Disco Friendly: I visited as an alt.

Peter: Well of course you did. That didn’t really need explaining.

Disco Friendly: I was curious.

Peter: That I had presupposed also.

Peter: After all, you’re the one who joins queues just to find out what’s at the end of them.

Disco Friendly: It was the most polite and wellmannered ejection I’ve ever experienced, I must say.

Peter: As you’ve perhaps already surmised, an unpleasant experience wouldn’t really have met our requirements.

Disco Friendly: A mild social punishment.

Peter: As mild as we can make it and still maintain peace on the sim.

Peter: We do, after all, still need to actually remove some people from time to time.

Disco Friendly: So if an ejected griefer should later return and behave themselves, they can’t self-justify this compliance so easily as motivated by avoiding the punishment – since it wasn’t actually so terrible a punishment.

Disco Friendly: Instead, they resolve this dissonance by just liking the sim a lot more.

Peter: Or to balance themselves… just saying.

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Peter: Oh, you missed the bit where it makes them more likely to return in the first place.

Peter: That’s also quite important.

Peter: To me.

Disco Friendly: You’re subtly programming people to like you and rate their experiences here more positively.

Peter: Programming? That makes it sound like a manipulative advertising campaign.

Peter: What if I was to say that we’re subtly *influencing* people to value us and rate their experiences here as more meaningful to them?

Peter: Of course, another way of looking at it is we’re just being nice to people.

Disco Friendly: With what objective in mind?

Peter: You’ve seen through me. I might as well come clean.

Peter: We’ll soon be launching a new range of cleaning products.

Disco Friendly laughs.

Disco Friendly: Seriously.

Peter: Why don’t we deal with your objectives before we deal with mine?

Disco Friendly: What if my objectives are to discover your objectives?

Peter: Then that would suggest that you’re either a member of the esteemed press or someone from a security service somewhere.

Disco Friendly: You sound as though you’ve been expecting me.

Peter: You sound as though that surprises you.

Disco Friendly: I might just be a curious resident.

Disco Friendly: Actually, I have a very specific 142

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question.

Peter: Ask away.

Disco Friendly: Can I build here?

Peter: That’s your question?

Disco Friendly: No. But it would be easier if I showed you what I’m looking for than tried to describe it.

Peter: In that case, you may do so now.

I rezzed a cube on the grass between us and cut a quarter of it out, then I gave each of the faces a different colour.

Disco Friendly: Have you seen this object here before?

Disco Friendly: Replicated many times over in a large grid.

Disco Friendly: The colours I’ve used here are examples – they could be any colour.

Peter: Yes I have.

Peter: And now I know which of those two institutions you represent.

Disco Friendly: When did you see it?

Peter: I think it was a little over two weeks ago.

Disco Friendly: Did you build it?

Peter: No. It was shown to me by one of my visitors.

Peter: We have a building platform high above us.

Peter: I took him there and he rezzed it for me.

Peter: The device you describe is very, very small.

You could fit it into a pea.

Peter: All the prims overlap with each other.

Peter: A command expands the whole thing.

Disco Friendly: Then it’s a finished, working device?

Peter: I believe so, yes.

Disco Friendly: Did you send somebody a picture of it.

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Peter: No. But I did ask the man it belonged to to do so.

Peter: I assume then that he did.

Disco Friendly: I need to know who that person was.

Disco Friendly: This could be potentially a very dangerous device.

Peter: No more dangerous than a piece of paper.

Disco Friendly: A piece of paper can be a very dangerous thing indeed, depending on what’s written upon it.

Peter: Precisely so.

Peter: And just as paper is sold freely in shops, there is nothing whatsoever to prevent my visitor from selling his device on the Marketplace.

Peter: It is simply a device for recording information.

Disco Friendly: Then may I assume that the reason you asked him to send it to us was not the fact of its existence but the use it was intended to be put to?

Peter: You may.

Disco Friendly: What was that use?

Peter: The man did not know.

Peter: He was approached as a builder by someone he knew in Second Life.

Peter: It was a commission. The purchaser had already worked out how colours could be used to store information, however he lacked the scripting knowledge to realise it.

Peter: The builder was keen for the commission. The money was good.

Peter: But as he worked, his imagination started to conjure all manner of sinister uses for the device he was creating.

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Peter: None of which, I should add, seemed remotely likely to him, based on his knowledge of the purchaser.

Peter: But, to satisfy his conscience, he contacted the purchaser a couple of times to ask casually what purpose the device would be put to.

Peter: The first time, the purchaser avoided answering the question.

Peter: The second time, he told the builder in – shall we say – very forceful terms that it was none of his business.

Peter: This concerned the builder greatly. Such forcefulness was not in character for his acquaintance, as he knew him.

Peter: Or as he thought he knew him.

Peter: He confided in a friend… who happened to be one of my friends.

Peter: And so he came to see me.

Disco Friendly: Has the device been delivered to the purchaser yet?

Peter: No. The only copy still resides on my platform above.

Peter: The builder was worried his account might be broken into and the device stolen from his inventory.

Disco Friendly: He could have just deleted it.

Peter: By the time he came to see me, he had become very scared.

Peter: He wanted to delete it, but he feared that somehow the purchaser might find out who he was in real life and threaten his family.

Peter: He wanted to have a device he could hand over to them if that were to happen.

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known to any intelligence agencies, for fear that they – that you, of course – might force him somehow to work for you.

Peter: He was also worried that your own security would be insufficient and that once his details were on your system they might find their way somehow back to the purchaser.

Peter: He was extremely distressed.

Peter: I believe he has not logged in to Second Life since the time of our discussion.

Peter: In that account, at least.

Disco Friendly: I really need to talk to him.

Disco Friendly: I need to find out about the people who asked him to build it.

Disco Friendly: You understand that, right?

Peter: I do, Disco.

Peter: However, I made a promise to him that I would not reveal his identity.

Peter: If I hadn’t done that, he would not have sent you the picture.

Disco Friendly: Some promises have to be broken when the lives of others are at risk, Peter.

Peter: One cannot make a solemn promise in the sure knowledge that one will break it, Disco.

Disco Friendly: Did he tell you the name of the purchaser?

Peter: He did not.

Disco Friendly: Then we have nothing. No lead.

Disco Friendly: He might as well not have sent us the picture, for all the good it does.

Peter: That is not entirely true, as I’m sure you’re well aware.

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Peter: You have me.

Disco Friendly: Are you inviting me to pull you in for interrogation?

Peter: Inviting it? No. I’m merely encouraging honesty in our conversation.

Disco Friendly: I don’t know who you are in RL, in case you’re wondering.

Disco Friendly: I don’t have access to any system which would tell me that information.

Disco Friendly: Though I could request it from people who do.

Peter: Is that a threat, Disco?

Disco Friendly: A threat? No. I’m merely contributing to the honesty you value.

Peter: I understand that you are motivated to protect people, Disco.

Peter: That is why I encouraged the builder to seek you out. I want people to be protected to.

Peter: What I could do is contact him and ask him to meet you here – with me.

Peter: I offer no promise that he will comply.

Disco Friendly: Well, that would certainly be a start.

Peter: Perhaps there are assurances you can offer him which I might communicate?

Disco Friendly: I don’t work directly for any agency; I’m a freelance investigator and I do some work occasionally for the Americans.

Disco Friendly: And I do so solely because I want to protect innocent people. I don’t need the money any more, but I do have a debt to society.

Disco Friendly: But my status means I get to decide what information I pass on and what I don’t. In the 147

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short-term.

Disco Friendly: That’s not a cast-iron guarantee, because if I thought the only way I could prevent the loss of life was to sell him out, then I would do so without hesitation.

Disco Friendly: Not to mention that I could be interrogated just as you could be.

Disco Friendly: Which my employer would do with the exact same lack of hesitation if he thought I was withholding important information.

Disco Friendly: But it is a promise that I will do my best.

Peter: Well it’s not, as you say, any sort of guarantee.

Peter: But I will pass it on.

Peter: May I copy your exact words into any communication I send him?

Disco Friendly: Yes, of course.

Peter: Then it would seem that we have a plan.

Peter: I hope I don’t need to tell you that if you make any attempt to visit the platform above to try to determine the identity of the builder then you’ll be sent straight to Mrs Crimson.

Disco Friendly: As mild a threat as that is, I give you my word that I’ll not make any such attempt over at least the next 24 hours.

Peter: Well I can’t promise he’ll even have got back to me within that time, let alone agreed to any meeting.

Disco Friendly: I know that, Peter.

Disco Friendly: I know you’ll do your best.

Disco Friendly: I have to do my best also.

Peter: Indeed you do.

Peter: Thank you for coming to see me.

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Peter: I’ll be in touch.

Disco Friendly: Will I need to queue to see you again?

Peter: Not until we have resolved this issue.

Disco Friendly: I want to know more about what you do here.

Peter: We will speak again, Disco.

Peter: We have many things yet to discuss.

Peter: For now, though, farewell.

The hilltop disappeared and I found myself back at ground level, in a small camp on the other side of the hill that previously I’d missed in my cammed exploration of the island. It was in a small clearing in a wooded area, and the two avatars who’d previously stood in front of me in the queue were sitting on logs around a fire.

Mono Common: I’m still weeping.

Mono Common: I don’t know what to make of it.

Calire Button: Don’t try to analyse it.

Calire Button: Just let it happen.

Calire Button: Oh hello Disco  Of course. The debrief. This was where the process of post hoc aggrandising and exaggeration started.

Disco Friendly: Hey Calire and Mono :) Calire Button: How was your visit?

Disco Friendly: It was very good, thanks.

Mono Common: He’s such a beautiful man.

Mono Common: It was like he’s been with me all my life.

Calire Button: Won’t you sit with us a while, Disco?

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Calire Button: Perhaps share with us some of what you learned.

Calire Button: But only if you want to.

Disco Friendly: Thank you, but I’d like to reflect a little first.

Calire Button: Of course, my friend.

Calire Button: Then just sit.

Mono Common: It feels like everything I’ve ever done has been leading me to this point.

Calire Button: Well perhaps it has.

Mono Common: I want to join him. I have to join him.

Calire Button: That chance will come, I’m sure.

Calire Button: We are still only at the very beginning of the work that has to be done.

Calire Button: There is so much ahead of us.

I thought about what I wanted to do next. One option was to contact Fred about Peter. All they needed was an avatar name and they’d have all his details within the hour. They’d hunt down his IP. They’d monitor his connection. They’d intercept any communication he sent. They’d know the identity of the builder before the builder even knew that he’d been contacted. There was really no further need for Peter at all once he did what he’d said that he’d do.

Of course, Peter had to know all that too, and know I knew he knew.

Which meant he was sending me a message of sorts.

Perhaps he was telling me I could trust him. Perhaps he was asking how much he could trust me. But perhaps it was something much less noble, just a wink in my direction whilst he claimed out loud he’d not betray his 150

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source, an off-the-record sign that I could do what I wanted with the guy so long as I kept him out of it.

But what if none of that was true? What if every last word had been a lie? What if it was him who had built the data device and he had no idea who’d sent the photograph of it? What if the whole story of the builder and the offer to contact him was all a fiction to buy himself twenty-four hours in which to flee whatever location he was currently in?

I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t really certain why. Was it just the time I’d spent in the queue that was messing with my thoughts?

And hadn’t I been here before? Hadn’t I sworn I’d never believe anyone ever again?

“You made the wrong decision,” Stransky had said to me, nearly two years earlier.

I sighed. Twenty-four hours. We would see how the land lay then.

151

11 Eamon Herriot had unlocked and opened his back door and peered into the back garden. My heart beating savagely, I stepped in front of him, pushed the Taser into his belly and squeezed it on. He grunted and flopped forward, and I managed to catch him before he hit the ground and made any more noise.

Fucking, fucking Stransky. I vowed to myself that I’d send the other half of that avatar account the way of the first before the night was over. I stood Herriot up as best I could and moved around to the back of him, then I lowered him gently to the floor. I shut the back door, and dragged him into the hall, through the dining room and into the conservatory. I shut both the dining room and conservatory doors. I kept the light turned off.

Hopefully we’d be neither seen nor heard here by anyone.

I sat Herriot down in a wicker chair and took a seat right behind him. I pushed the electrode gap of the stun gun into the back of his neck.

Wait. Would that work? Now came the doubts. What if he tipped himself forward and away from me? I tried the side of his neck and that felt no safer at all. I decided I needed to secure him, then, but with what? I wasted about ten seconds stupidly looking about in the almost pitch black conservatory for a convenient length of rope.

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And then the panic started to descend.

For a moment, I was back on the hotel bed in Portsmouth, my hands and feet tied behind my back, and Inch Sideways was standing over me, saying, “Got you.”

Got you. Got you. Got you. It felt like I’d been running now for as long as I could remember, yet it was still less than three months ago since that moment in which my old life had ended. The half hour or so that had followed – the escape from the hotel, the false trail to the railway station, my flight to the island via hovercraft – I’d since replayed over and over in my dreams, every single one of them waking me in a cold sweat.

Got you. Got you. Got you.

Breathe. I was sweating heavily now. And then, two problems and a memory met and mixed and supplied me with a solution. I took off my leggings and tied one leg around his wrists behind the chair and the other around his ankles. I pulled everything tight. That would have to do.

I waited for him to come round.

It took another minute or so. In that time I also hit upon the idea of setting up Stransky’s SLR in video record mode, since I didn’t have my phone with me to record Herriot’s audio: the image would be useless in the dark, but the sound would be just fine.

He started to grunt, then he jerked and gasped suddenly, as though in that instant remembering the shock of the stun. I pushed the electrode gap firmly into his neck and said into his ear, ”Shhhhh… Don’t say a word, Eamon. Do you hear me? Whisper ‘Yes’ if you understand.”

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He stiffened at the sound of my voice. “Yes,” he said, hoarsely.

“Good. I have some things to say that you need to listen to. My name is… Thursday. I’m here on behalf of the people you have violated in Second Life.”

“Please don’t kill me,” he whimpered. For a moment, I was stunned that he would think such a thing. I had a sudden fear that he somehow knew I was Emma Kline, suspected murderer… but then it occurred to me that he probably had no idea who the people he’d screwed over actually were in real life: perhaps he feared now that one of them had some connection to organised crime and had used their contacts to track him down.

I slapped his head with my free hand and he gasped.

“I told you not to speak, Eamon. Of course I’m not going to kill you. You have bigger things to worry about than your own pathetic life right now – like the wellbeing of your wife and boys upstairs.”

“Please don’t hurt them,” he whispered. I slapped him again, though a part of me was pleased he had at least acknowledged they were important. “What part of ‘don’t speak’ is causing you difficulties? I’m not here to physically hurt you or your family, but if you don’t behave yourself the way I expect then your actions will lead both you and them to emotional pain and humiliation you will probably have never believed possible. Do I have your attention?”

“Yes.” “Good. Then let’s get this over with. I have an associate who’s waiting for me in the road outside who believes we should publish online all the evidence we have about your activities in SL. For the record, my 154

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belief is that we should turn it over to the police. He doesn’t want to do that because he thinks our clients won’t want to press charges and risk seeing their SL lives in the press. I think that’s bullshit. I’m ninety per cent certain I could talk at least one of them into pressing charges. I think his actual reason for not wanting to go to the police is a desire to protect the identity of the hacker he employs who got us the information that led to you.

“I didn’t mea-“ I slapped him again. Harder. “Don’t make me change my mind on my not killing you policy. You’ll get your chance to talk in just a moment. What I need you to understand right now is just how badly my partner and I want to punish you for what you did.

“There’s one thing – and only one thing – that’s holding me back from making your exploits public in one way or another, and that’s the wellbeing of those boys of yours. Just so we’re clear we understand each other, I want you to tell me what will happen if it gets out what you’ve been doing from your chair in that nice little study of yours.”

He paused. Then he cleared his throat. Then he said, “What exploits?” His voice was shaking. It felt theatrical. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I sighed and tried to keep the real shake out of my own voice. What exactly was I going to do if he refused to talk to me? “See, this is why I wanted to keep the pace up, Eamon. Now you’ve gone and got used to me being here and started trying to scheme your way out of this.”

I tried to keep a slow, unhurried, unconcerned pace. I forced myself to breathe. “Let me spell this out for you: 155

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the only option for you right now is to be totally, brutally and utterly honest with me. I’m going to ask you one more time, and if you try that ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ bullshit on me again then I’m going to stun you unconscious once more and leave, and tomorrow your story will be published online and there’ll be anonymous emails in the inboxes of all the local newspapers directing them to where I’ve published it. This is your one and only chance. So. What will happen, Eamon, if people learn about what you’ve been doing?”

“Really,” he said hurriedly, “you have to believe I don’t know what you’re – “ “Save it,” I told him. “We’re done here.” I pushed the electrodes into his neck. “Wait!” he cried.

I pulled away. “Go on.”

Now his voice shook for real. “I’ll be suspended from my job, pending investigation. Then I’ll be sacked. My wife will probably leave me and she’ll take the boys with her.”

I tried to let my breath out as silently as possible.

“Good. Then we’re agreed on what’s at stake here. Now let me explain to you what I want next. I want to know why, Eamon. My partner and I have been arguing about little else all day.”

“I don’t know why,” Herriot said.

I slapped him again. “Don’t waste our time with answers like that. You went to some trouble over your deceptions; now you can invest a little effort in this moment right now. I need to know, Eamon; I don’t care how vile, how pathetic or how brutal your reasons are but I need to know. You’re an educator. Teach me.”

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He sighed. His head dropped forward a little. I saw the movement below of his hands testing his bonds, but it was a half-hearted assessment. He sighed again.

“I’m not proud of what I’ve done,” he began.

I said nothing.

“I’m even less proud of why I do it. I want them. I want them so bad. I want all of them.”

“Why do you want them, Eamon?”

“I’ve always wanted them,” he replied. “I’ve always wanted all those perfect women. They look and sound and smell so good. They move so well. They’re like water flowing over a stone. They’re like flowers. Really, they are flowers. There’s nothing wrong with me that I’m attracted to them: that’s the way it’s meant to be.

Beauty has function. Flowers are supposed to attract.

I’m allowed to be attracted in principle but I’m not allowed to say I’m attracted and, really, what’s the difference between that and not being allowed to think I’m attracted? Every time I think it I feel guilt, because I’m educated and should know better. I should think better. Actually, I do think better, but I don’t think better all the time. I’m at war with myself. I fight constantly.”

I said nothing.

“Fine. You asked me why and I’ll tell you why; you didn’t ask me for excuses and I’ll give you none.” His voice was a little stronger. “I don’t feel sorry for myself and I’m not for one moment going to try to elicit any sympathy from you, so don’t think that’s my intention. I want these women, but I can’t have them. I want them because I’m made to want them – designed to want them through biology and social conditioning – but even though that’s so, I’m not allowed to want them.

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Unprofessional. Politically incorrect. Yes, I know these things are true and necessary. I don’t disagree with them. I’m not one of these idiots who says PC has gone too far or who thinks a wolf-whistle at a passing woman is ‘just a bit of harmless fun’. I don’t hate these women because I can’t have them. I hate these women because I can’t want them. I’m not allowed to. I can’t want them, but even so I do.”

His voice was dry and sticky. I could smell his sweat.

It made me think about the stink of John-Paul Barnaby on my skin after I had killed and set light to him. I wondered if Herriot could smell me likewise, his senses heightened by his body’s arousal to danger. His head dipped further and looked to one side. I wondered if he could see my bare legs behind him and shifted to be out of his view. There was an intimacy to this moment. I thought about JP’s final struggle and the beautiful bleed of his life into his bed sheets.

“Who would the biggest condemnation come from if a stray thought ever escaped my lips?” Herriot asked, still looking down and to his right. “Why, the very women I covet. I admire everything about them: the way they look, the way they talk, the way they think. I admire their intelligence and their assertiveness and their organisation. I admire their priorities. They represent the best in all the qualities I value. I admire their achievements. Admiring and respecting is all well and good, ‘Thursday’, but what about when that admiring becomes adoration and what about when that adoration becomes desire? I was raised to regard these women as the very best sort of women – in some ways, as the very best sort of person; can it really be any surprise, then, 158

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that they’re the type I’m most attracted to? But simply by desiring them I become the thing they hate the most: the man who looks upon them and lusts.”

I said nothing.

“So I hate them,” he continued. “I hate them because I hate myself because of them. They’ve indoctrinated me so completely into their belief system that I both desire them and loathe myself for desiring them. I hate them and I want to punish them. What would I do without Second Life? Whatever you might think of me, I’m not a rapist – or, at least, not a real life one. I never could be.

Where could anyone possibly find excitement or arousal in ruining something so perfect and beautiful?” He stopped for a moment and took a long breath through his nose, and I became aware again of my perfume mixed with the scent of my body’s readiness for action.

“What pleasure could there be in overpowering someone just with brutality?” he went on. “These aren’t just intellectual views; I promise you it would be a physiological impossibility for me. I’m just not that sort of misogynist.

“I can’t remember exactly the moment when the idea to impersonate their partners in SL came to me or where I was at the time, but I do remember the wonderful feeling it gave me. It was like the buzz you get when you think up something that fits just perfectly. It was like poetry happening right there in my head. I’d been doing Second Life for three or four months at the time, initially because I was doing an essay on virtual world learning platforms for my NPQH. The first few days in SL you spend orientating to the whole thing, but then you start to become aware that there’s a variation in the 159

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way that people look, with some looking so much better and so much more realistic than others. And then you discover the shops, except nothing ever looks as good on you as it does in the picture on the box. And then you find the fashion magazine vending machines in the shops and you try an issue out. The first few times it’s infuriating to have everything obscured on your screen by such slowly loading page images, but then your toe’s well and truly in the door to the whole world of photography and opinion and fashion and blogging.

And suddenly you learn that the very same distinction between the somebodies and the nobodies that exists in the real world is present also in the metaverse. And most of these somebodies, you discover, are women.

“You want to know something?” he asked. “I don’t care what any of these people look like in real life; I really, honestly couldn’t give a damn. I only care about their SL looks and personalities. They’re symbols.

They’re models of the thing I’ve come to hate: perfection in every detail and dimension. And there they are in this new world and, once again, I find myself desiring them – but only the most successful, only the most aspirational, only the most creative; only the most utterly unattainable of them. The nightclub hostesses are of no interest to me, however well they’re dressed. The sim policewomen are mere caricatures – and poor ones at that – of the sort of woman I seek. Anyone who has absolutely anything at all in their profile about drama or about the terms of service and instant messages is an instant and complete turn-off. Anyone who feels the need to pass any sort of judgement on any category of avatar or profile: don’t speak to me if you don’t dress well, they say; don’t speak 160

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to me it you look like a newbie; don’t speak to me if your cock isn’t the right colour or if you’re wearing SL hair or a facelight; don’t speak to me if you don’t have a real life picture in your first life tab or a recent picture in your second life tab or any sort of quote from anyone in your profile text or picks only of shops and venues; don’t speak to me if you’re less than three months old… Who the fuck do these pathetic people think they are to dictate the terms of their acquaintance before you’ve so much as shaken their hand?” He practically spat the words out.

“No,” he said. “The sort of women I seek use their profile to tell the virtual world what they do and what they’re passionate about. They glow. They’re driven.

They’re not dragged down by whatever ugliness lies around them, though neither are they naïve or innocent.

They’re perfection. And I want them. I want every single one of them. And I hate them every bit as much as I hate them in real life for making me want them and for making me hate wanting them.

“You think to yourself, ‘These women are flesh and blood, the same as any other women. They still eat.

They still fart. They still have sex. They still get embarrassed about things. They still fear.’” He inhaled slowly through his nose again. Could he smell my fear?

“You start fantasising about the real person behind the mask, the real woman – the real human being beneath the controlled façade.”

I couldn’t help myself. I said, quoting Stransky, “There’s no such thing as ‘the real human being’. Every person is a collection of personalities.”

“An interesting viewpoint,” Herriot replied, “psychologically valid, perhaps, but to all practical 161

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extents and purposes just so much nonsense. Every person is effectively two people. I don’t mean the way they present to different audiences: sure, there are many of those masks but they’re all ultimately offshoots of the presented self. Then there is the hidden self. The dark thoughts. The fantasies. The kinks and fetishes. The things you like to think about that you know you shouldn’t think about. The stuff you do in secret, from binge eating to masturbation to secret racism to privately hating your spouse and to plotting the murder of someone and seeing it all the way through.”

I swallowed and said nothing.

“Some people keep it all so tightly concealed that they end up going to their graves without anyone ever getting the slightest hint of what they’re like behind their eyelids; others let it leak, and they leak it most of all to their lovers. That’s what I wanted to see. I wanted to see these women’s leak.

“And then one day it occurred to me that there’s something you can do in SL that you couldn’t possibly do in real life. If a man rapes a woman in RL, he doesn’t get to see anything real or true about her. He might think he’s ripping away a mask, but he’s not; all he’s doing is creating someone new, someone terrified, someone wretched and broken. There’s nothing left of the person you covet if you do that. The only way you actually could see behind the mask for real would be if you could be with a woman and have her think you were the one she was in love with.

“So I started,” he said. “I selected my targets. I befriended their lovers. The hardest part was the business of obtaining the passwords. I spent weeks 162

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researching the tools I’d need and then setting them up to brute-force crack the account via the SL website. On a few occasions, I actually managed to get the stupid boyfriends to tell me their passwords, which saved a lot of bother. Impersonating them was easy enough for the space of an evening. I learned their mannerisms quickly and any imperfections queried I’d put down to a head cold or stress or drunkenness. The truth of what I was doing was just too incredulous for it even to occur to them. Who would suspect that their lover was really someone else for that evening?

“I’d spend my time becoming familiar with them.

Once I had the password, I’d wait until I knew them well enough that my plan was starting to become uncomfortable to me. In part, this was because I wanted it to feel wrong because that made it all the more exciting; for the most part, though, it was just that the more familiar I became with her presented self the more I desired her hidden.

“And so I got to see and taste all those thoughts behind all those impenetrable faces. I crossed the dividing line between the presented and the hidden. I witnessed their nakedness in unbelievable detail. It was… incredible. I remember the first time. We did it in IM and there were people all around us. It’s not that there are just two people to every person, Thursday; there are actually two worlds. They overlap precisely. If you’re brought up like I was to only see that which is presented, the first glimpse of the hidden world is… intoxicating. Once you’ve been there, you just can’t get enough of it.”

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strength of my knots again. Somehow, the bubble of intimacy was dissolved.

“Is that enough?” he asked. “Does that tell you what you wanted to know?”

“What? Did you think I was going to grade you?” I replied.

“I won’t do it again,” he said. “I know that it’s wrong.

I know that it’s pathetic.”

“Tell me how you know that.”

“I’ve violated trust. I’ve taken things which don’t belong to me. I’ve ruined people’s relationships.”

It interested me that he knew about that. Five of the women he’d attacked in this way had broken up with the partners whose avatars he’d hijacked because they felt too much information about them must have been given away in the period during which Herriot was gently milking them.

Of these five, two had left SL permanently. Clearly he took an interest in what happened to his victims after his assault.

“I don’t agree with your ‘hidden world’ model,” I told him. “There is simply that which is public and that which is private, and we all decide where the line between the two gets set and who we lower it for and who we raise it for. That’s what intimacy is all about, and it’s no more complicated than that. But even if I did accept your bullshit model, would it do the world any good if everyone rejected the presented world by simple virtue of having discovered that the hidden world existed?”

“No,” he said. “It wouldn’t.”

“So however fabricated, however artificial you might think your presented world to be, it exists because we 164

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need it to, because it keeps the world turning and delivers aspiration, and it tries to create fairness for people. We created it for a reason, Eamon, and it’s not your fucking world to destroy.”

“I know.”

I felt suddenly drained. It was time to go. I’d had enough of this stupid man. “What would you wish,” I asked him, “for all the little girls in your school?

“I would want for them to be amazing,” he said. “I would want for them to rule the world.”

“Then you’d better make exactly that happen,” I told him. “I mean it. I want to see aspiring female mathematicians and chemists and physicists and politicians coming out of your school and I promise you that I’ll be watching. Every time something’s published about your school I’ll be reading it. You are now my personal investment, Eamon Herriot.

Do you understand?”

“I understand,” he replied.

Stransky would be furious at what I was about to do.

Fuck him. “So help me God,” I said, “don’t make me regret not exposing you. If I ever hear of you violating someone online again then I will bring the shores of hell to your front door. Everything I have on you, including the recording I just made of your therapeutic confession – oh yes; it’s all on tape – will be everywhere I can make it visible. You will have no further chances. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Listen to me: you’re going to go to every site where you posted your shit – every one of them – and enter a full apology for your actions. If the original posts still 165

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exist, you will delete them. I’ll be checking up on this in exactly twenty-four hours. You have a responsibility now to the people you’ve influenced with your poison.

Make your apology convincing.”

“I will,” he said.

What else? “And I want you to seek professional help.

You’ll indicate that you’re going to do so in your apologies and you’ll then make at least one post per month for the next six months on each of those sites giving details about what you’ve learned through the process. Your twisted conflict is not some sort of inevitability of the progressive world we live in. It’s now your duty to learn that and to teach it to others. Are we clear on that?”

He inhaled again before answering, as though sensing the end of a most pleasant encounter was nearing and wanting to savour its final moments. It unnerved me.

“Yes,” he said finally.

“And you’ll address all of those posts to me, Eamon. I want everyone to know my name. I want everyone to know I’ll be coming for them if they take the trust of someone online and betray it in front of an audience.

You look out for me. Keep an eye on what I intend to start doing and you’ll understand just how lucky you’ve been tonight.”

“I promise I will attend to you very closely,” he said.

I stunned him back into unconsciousness. I untied him, put back on my leggings, picked up the camera and left him there in the conservatory.

The hallway was empty and I let myself out of the front door.

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As I knew he would be, Stransky was still waiting in the car two doors down.

“You’re a bastard,” I told him, once I’d got in.

“The pace needed picking up,” he replied, turning the key. “We were going round and round in circles. Are we done here? Can we go back to Medway now?”

“Drive,” I said.

I finished reporting as we drove across the Severn.

“You made the wrong decision,” Stransky said.

“Perhaps,” I replied.

167

12 He drove in silence the entire remaining length of the M4 and then all the way round the M25 anti-clockwise to the M26. I slept most of the way. When we got to the M2, he woke me up by turning on the radio. He told me in a very matter-of-fact voice that he had to go and see a new client at ten in the morning. It was already past three.

As soon as we got into his flat he went straight to the bathroom and then to bed. His mood unnerved me. I was still exhausted, but I kept waking in the night, dreaming I was in the Herriots’ hallway with Eamon, his wife watching me silently from the top of the stairs.

I sat during the next day monitoring websites for his apologies, knowing that there was very little he could actually do whilst he was at his school. Stransky came back just after one and started telling me about the new case, his face alive with excitement as though the previous day had never happened. We started the basic research on the target. He phoned a couple of his contacts. I went inworld to visit a couple of the new target’s frequented sims and ask a few casual questions of the regulars. We ordered in pizza at six. It came with a large latte for him and a beer for me. We turned on the television and talked about Lisa Riley’s chances in Strictly Come Dancing.

At just after 9pm I saw that the first apology had been 168

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posted: Dear Thursday, You have asked me to apologise for what I’ve done. I do so now without reservation. I am ashamed by my behaviour. I’m doubly ashamed that it’s taken being tracked down in real life and held to account for my actions to bring me here to make this apology. I am, however, grateful to you for motivating me to do so.

To the guys here who gave me a thumbs up, who cheered me on, who applauded what I did: you people made me feel great about my behaviour. I want you to know that. Partly the reason that I posted the logs of my encounters were the supportive comments you made, all of which reinforced my conviction in my belief that perfect women should be exposed and humiliated. That belief is wrong. At some level, I know I knew that, and I know I sought your support because I knew that. Your approval made it easier for me to not look too closely at my faulty beliefs. It helped me to go on believing them.

If any of you are thinking about doing anything even remotely similar to what I did, you need to know how this will turn out. First of all, you or a part of you will realise that what you’ve done is wrong. You’ll either give in to guilt and shame and depression at that point or you’ll resolve your dissonance by seeking the affirmation of others as I did.

Because you’ll know deep down that it’s wrong, you’ll want to do whatever it is you’ve done more and more in the hope that the more and more you do it and the more affirmation you receive the more you’ll convince yourself that it’s right. That buried guilt will gnaw away at you from the inside, but you’ll do your very best to pile more and more fake conviction on top 169

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of it to try to prevent it from surfacing and bringing everything around it – the whole world you’ve constructed – falling to the ground.

Secondly, you will be hunted, just as I was. Your belief that you are secure and immune is untrue. People will come for you. The people you have violated will find out who you are and hold you to account for what you’ve done. When they do, you will have no argument, no moral ground, no virtue to hide behind; they will destroy you.

I write this because it’s part of the conditions that have been set for me by Thursday to avoid this destruction and I’m in no doubt that she’ll use what she knows to bring my world to ruin if I don’t comply. But I don’t write it with a gun at my head.

There’s a very large part of me that wants to write it, that wants to be free from all the faulty thinking and fake conviction I’ve indoctrinated myself into over the past six years. Another part of the conditions set for me is to seek professional help to explore and correct this thinking, and to report on it here every month. I will do this gladly because I want to be free and because I believe that freedom – however painfully it’s acquired – has to be better than slavery in one’s own head.

I doubt that many of you will be pleased to read this. If nothing else, respect that I have changed my mind. And, if you can’t bring yourself to do that, then take from this that you should be very scared of a woman called Thursday.

She wants you to know that she will come for you.

It wasn’t exactly grovelling; it didn’t exactly address any of his faulty beliefs and try to deconstruct them; I supposed, however, that that would come in his therapy updates. For now, it would do. A huge wave of relief 170

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passed through me that he’d done what I’d told him to do and I wouldn’t have to go back and carry out my threat.

I showed it to Stransky. He read through it silently, then grunted.

“Words,” he said. “Easy. He probably spent all day composing that little speech in his head teacher’s office.”

“So long as he keeps his word, he can spend as much time composing speeches as he wants.”

“He probably thinks you’re about the most perfect woman out of all the perfect women he ever met right now. How he must have enjoyed making that confession to you. And not only did you listen, you gave him a way out.”

I felt my cheeks flush. “It was the least damaging option.”

“Yeah, yeah. We went through all that. Well I hope you’re right, Thursday; I really do. But my guess is that, sooner or later, he’s going to come down off his epiphany high and find all those corrupted cognitions waiting for him, right where he left them.”

“That’s why I told him to seek help.”

“Therapy is no sure guarantee of anything. You have to want to be helped.”

“Isn’t that exactly what he’s saying?” I insisted.

He looked at me, incredulously. “They’re just words, Emma. You have no way of knowing, one way or another. Maybe he’ll book his first appointment before your twenty-four hours is up and start talking whilst the momentum is still there. But maybe he has no intention deep down of changing. Maybe this is all so much forbidden toy.”

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I looked at him. “Forbidden toy?” I repeated. “What are you talking about?”

He folded up one of the last two pieces of cold pizza and took a bite out of it. “I looked into your history,” he said. “I know you did Psychology at university.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Maybe you should revise. Psychology doesn’t only operate within the four walls of the perception laboratory. Think back. Cognitive dissonance. Your friend Eamon seems to know all about it.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “you’d care to illuminate me.”

He swallowed. He took a swig of cold latte. “A bunch of psychologists in the sixties put some pre-schoolers in a room – one at a time – with a whole load of toys. They made sure that one of the toys was highly desirable.

They said to each child that they were going to leave them by themselves in the room for a while and that the one thing they couldn’t do during that time was play with the desirable toy. To some of the children they promised serious punishments if they found that the toy had been played with on their return. To the others, they promised only a mild punishment: nothing really terrible at all. They went away for a bit and then they came back.

None of the kids had played with the forbidden toy. So then the psychologists told them they were going to leave them alone again, only this time they could play with the forbidden toy all they wanted. But what they found was that the children who’d been promised only the mild punishment before now didn’t want to play with it: the threatened punishment had been so mild it didn’t really justify in their heads their decision to not play with it, so they’d decided they didn’t like it so much 172

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after all.

The kids who’d been promised dire consequences, however, wanted it just as much as they did before.”

He took another bite of pizza. “Your threatened dire consequences,” he said, “won’t change how much Herriot wants to violate the women he’s intimidated by.”

I grimaced. “You can’t compare the unexamined preferences of a three-year-old with this man’s complex conflict.”

“What is it with you?” he asked me. “He puts up a show as a caring head teacher and you won’t believe him capable of anything else until you see it with your own eyes. And then he spins you this endless story of how modern society’s got him all tied up in psychological knots and you go and believe that too.”

I sighed and shut my eyes. “So what are you suggesting? That I should have threatened a more lenient set of sanctions.”

“You shouldn’t have threatened anything at all. Your job isn’t to change his personality, it’s to deliver a consequence.”

“Then why the fuck,” I shouted, “did you rat on me?

Clearly you wanted me to speak to him. What were you imagining we would talk about if it wasn’t about why he did what he did?”

Stransky looked suddenly subdued. “It didn’t play out the way I thought it would,” he said. “I knew you were going to go for the warning rather than the punishment; I was resigned to that. But he was far more calculated than I expected him to be. He should have been begging you or sobbing or even threatening to gut you – at least that would have shown some emotion.

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What I didn’t predict was him spinning you that great long speech, a speech that sounded in many places like he was actually having a good time. Here’s a thought: what if he enjoyed your physical proximity and now starts fantasising about that?” His face softened a little.

“I know you think he was being genuine and maybe he was, but I just don’t think a guy in his situation would be quite so clear-headed and articulate as that.

“I think he played you, Thursday,” Stransky said.

“And that worries me.”

The new case really got going a few days later when we narrowed down the location of our target to Caen in France. Stransky’s meeting on the day after Cardiff had been with the father of a young woman who’d had cam sex with an online lover met in SL who had then posted the recording he made of her on a porn site. But we had to put the case on hold because I still didn’t have a useable passport.

A week later, he came through the door holding a giftwrapped parcel for me the size of a shoe box. I tore away the wrapping paper in mock excitement. Inside, nestling in a sea of polystyrene balls, was a new British passport. My name, according to the lettering across the photo page, was Rebecca Styles. I was 32. I was born in Rotherham.

“I think I’m going to cry,” I said. I cradled it in my hands. “Thank you.”

“I want a good return on that,” Stransky told me.

“You have no idea how difficult those things are to get hold of.”

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said. “Whatever it cost.”

“I don’t want your money, Thursday. I want – I need – a good investigator.”

A week after that I had a bank account in my new name and with it a debit card. I could buy things online again. I didn’t have to beg any more in SL for the cost of a new outfit. I celebrated by booking online a seat for myself at the local cinema and went to see Argo. It was utter luxury. Stransky thought this amusing.

I came back that evening earlier than I’d said I would.

I’d told him I planned to go to a bar after the film, but the experience had been so perfect I decided to end the evening there and then rather than risk spoiling it with something additional and uncertain. When I entered the flat, Stransky, sitting on his sofa, shut his laptop rather abruptly and slid it up towards him.

“Hi,” he said, a little breathlessly. “Good film?”

I laughed. “Don’t leave her waiting on my account,” I told him.

He reddened a little. “I’m hardly going to… do things… in front of you.” His laptop bobbed up and down a little and he steadied it with his hands.

I was feeling more than a little drunk on freedom, and my boundaries towards him were temporarily a great deal fuzzier than they would ordinarily have been. So I laughed again and went over to him, and picked up his laptop; and it surprised me momentarily that he seemed more concerned that I’d open it than see his erect cock protruding from his fly. He snatched the computer away from me. In a single, deft movement, he’d removed the battery and tossed it onto the sofa.

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teased him. “The thought of finishing you off or the mystery of your online encounter.”

“I’m embarrassed to say it was just porn,” he replied.

He didn’t look especially embarrassed at all any more, particularly now that his laptop was dead and unable to surrender his secret.

As a man, he was neither attractive nor unattractive, but the moment was one of hunger on both our parts rather than any sort of serious mutual desire. I didn’t really want to play with him, I just wanted to feed. I swallowed him whole, taking him past my gag reflex and using the swallowing action to create a vacuum at the back of my throat and pull him into it. I knew straight away that he’d never experienced deepthroating before because his eyes widened in surprise, both at the strong sensation and at his sudden realisation he was no longer in any sort of control.

He came almost immediately, straight into my throat. I didn’t get to actually see or taste a single drop of it.

Once he’d got his breath back, he said, “Give me a few minutes and I’ll-“ “Don’t spoil it,” I told him. “I’m going to bed now.”

But then I couldn’t sleep and I ended up telling him this from his bedroom door. I let him drill me until he came again, pulling out at the last second to paint three white lines across my belly, the second of which was the longest and reached all the way up to my naval. I came myself very slowly and lightly, but it was satisfying in its own way. I just needed to be naked that night and entered.

“Just so we’re clear,” I said, “we’re not a couple.”

“I know,” he replied, and we slept that night together, 176

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but with our backs to each other.

The week after that, we went to France, sailing out of Portsmouth on a heading for Cherbourg. I watched the hovercraft cross our path behind us on its route to the Isle of Wight and thought about East Cowes, and inside I ached at the memory. I said aloud the word, “Theo,” just to feel its shape in my mouth again. As the south-eastern side of the island came into view I looked for Shanklin and the row of huts along the beach to Sandown. They were a tiny line of coloured dots.

It was a catamaran crossing and we alighted just three hours later. After another hour of driving we were entering Caen. Stransky had booked us rooms in a hotel on Avenue du Canada, about half a mile away from where our target, Vincent Tasse, lived. I had no idea how this was going to pan out; we knew very little about this guy beyond his habits in SL and his real life postal address. I desperately hoped he wouldn’t be married with kids like Eamon Herriot, and I realised how naïve I’d been in imagining Stransky’s job offer involved tracking down dirty old men in raincoats or fascist skinheads. I realised he’d been right about my lack of hesitation over killing John-Paul Barnaby: the reason it was easy was because he fit the stereotype I wanted him to be.

Not to mention that I’d started to realise just how deep-down conservative I apparently was. After a lifetime of believing I believed in the liberal left, it seemed to have transpired that I actually believed that nice, middle-class families were incapable of the wrongdoing Stransky and I were attempting to avenge – 177

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worse still, that if they were capable of it then they were worthy of second chances. As a private investigator in SL, I hadn’t given a second thought to who or what the people I was looking into were in RL, but now that I was tracking them down in the real world and delivering real world consequences, it was starting to look like the punishment in my mind fit the status rather than the crime.

Stransky hadn’t brought up again the subject of Herriot since our discussion the day after we got back from Cardiff. There had been no further posts on the forums other than a torrent of abuse in response to his apologies (which I guessed was predictable), but then it wasn’t yet a month since then so I wasn’t really expecting to see anything more. I checked every day, just the same.

Vincent Tasse, it turned out, was twenty-nine and lived with his mother, and worked in a nearby Intermarché. He was tall and skinny, and wore his shirt untucked.

“A geek,” Stransky commented. “Bullied at school, no doubt. Now, he’s getting his own back.”

“Wait,” I said. “Is that actually true or did you just make it up?”

He sighed. “Here we go again.”

“But if what you said is true then…”

“Then what? Then it’s okay that he did what he did?”

“It’s not okay that he did what he did. Of course it’s not.” I screwed the palms of my hands into my eyes in frustration. “I hate this. We shouldn’t be doing it, Stransky. This is for the police to handle.”

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go to the police and the daughter begged him not to. In any case, what if he had? Revenge porn cases are hard enough when the perpetrator had physical contact with the victim and lives in the same country. This case would require extradition and, according to both UK and French law, no obvious crime has been committed. The legislation’s simply not there yet.”

“That still doesn’t make it okay for us to appoint ourselves judge, jury and executioner.” I hated myself when I had to resort to cliché.

“Thursday,” he said, “In all cases of law breaking there are always reasons somewhere. We have to deal with those reasons preventatively, I agree. We don’t do enough of that work as a society, I agree. We let political agendas interfere with it all far too much, I agree absolutely. But, meanwhile, someone somewhere has to do something to send out a message that this behaviour is not okay. At the moment, all the attention is on the hosts of websites like IsAnyoneUp and virtually none of it is on the people who actually post there. Meanwhile, for every site taken down another will spring up in a foreign land unconcerned legislatively with our own legal procedures, ethics and – quite probably - wellbeing.

Posters put this stuff online with virtually no fear that they themselves will suffer any consequence. That word is getting out. That word is spreading. That word is what you and I need to address. And before you sound off further about no-one granting us a license for vigilantism, had it ever occurred to you that our vigilantism if it’s prolific enough might just end up being one of the pressures that leads in the end to some of the legislation you’d like to see in place finally being 179

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passed?”

“What if someone ends up committing suicide because we expose them?” I asked him. “I already have enough blood on my hands.”

“What if it does, Thursday?” he replied. “What if it does? Victims of cyber-exposure are committing suicide left, right and centre anyway. It’s happening all the time.

I want to remind you that we found several videos of other women similarly exploited on Tasse’s revengeporn profile. This guy is a serial offender – just like, I might add, Herriot is. This is not a one-off, heat of the moment, affair of the heart sort of thing: Tasse gets off on planning these violations and then carrying them out.

One after another after another after another. Regardless of whatever societal mechanics or deficit it was that created him, he’s our problem to deal with now.”

“I want to see him first, just the same,” I said.

“For fuck’s sake, Thursday!” Stransky cried.

“It’s just a trip to the supermarket. What possible problem can you have with that?”

“It’s a waste of my time talking to you,” he replied.

“Go to the supermarket, then, but go by yourself.”

And so I did. Tasse’s Intermarché branch was in the outskirts of the city on one of the roads leading out towards the Caen circular. It took an hour for me to get to it on foot. The supermarket was part of a large retail estate that included also a shoe shop, an electronics store and a large, canteen-style steakhouse. I had no idea how I was going to spot him. Stransky had shown me a photograph earlier in the day that he’d taken himself whilst I was still in bed, but it was from a distance and 180

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blurred; even his 20 megapixel SLR was limited, it appeared, when taking pictures in secret of a moving target.

I got there at about one in the afternoon and the supermarket was shut. I’d forgotten about French lunch times. I swore.

I was hungry after my walk, though, so I went to the restaurant, picking up a tray at the entrance and sliding it along until I saw a salad that looked promising. I picked up a large slice of flan and a tiny coffee to go with it, and for good measure a newspaper. I paid at the till and then entered into the maze of various tables and booths. This was, I decided, a restaurant without soul and I regretted not having invested a little extra effort and going back to one of the lovely looking cafés I’d walked past on the way earlier.

I spotted a small group of Intermarché employees sitting at a table and took the next one along in case, by some miracle, one of them happened to be Vincent.

It was all getting rather academic, though. I knew that, even if I did see him, it would almost certainly add nothing to my confidence in this work. I knew that I was effectively through as Stransky’s partner. For some reason, the detachment I’d so easily managed during my days as a Second Life investigator was almost entirely absent out here in the real world. However bad the behaviours were, I just couldn’t bring myself to step into the lives of strangers and destroy.

I knew Stransky was going to be furious, but the more I thought about this and the stronger I became in my resolve, the more relaxed I felt. I started flicking through the newspaper whilst I ate. I started to actually taste the 181

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salad.

On page five, I saw the headline and the picture beneath it. A sudden knot formed in my stomach.

Enseignante Britannique arrêté en lien avec le viol d'une femme à Cardiff.

It was a small article; an offhand reporting of a foreign news story that presumably was newsworthy in France only because it had grabbed the attention of the British media. I snatched my phone out of my bag and turned data back on – to hell with the roaming charges – and a steady parade of Google news alerts for ‘Orton Primary School’ pinged their way onto my notification screen.

Eamon Herriot had been arrested on suspicion of rape.

At half past eight that evening, I pressed the door buzzer and worked on straightening my coat whilst I waited.

The door opened. He was tall and skinny, not at all unpleasant looking, except his hair looked unwashed.

“Oui?” he said.

“Bon soir, Vincent,” I said. “Je m’appelle Thursday.”

I pushed the taser into his gut and dropped him to the ground.

182

13 Peter’s twenty-four hours were up; I returned to his sim.

The queue was a good twenty people long now.

Word, it appeared, was starting to get out about this man. But the front six people at least had been at the end of my queue on the previous day. I checked the minimap and saw just one green dot at the hilltop. My radar told me that Peter was in the region. At least he hadn’t fled, then.

Always assuming it was just one person operating that account. Always assuming, in fact, that there was actually a person sitting at the keyboard of the computer currently logged into that account. He could have just left his PC running whilst he left.

He/she.

I sent him an IM. Disco Friendly: Peter, it’s been 24 hours.

Disco Friendly: Have you sent your message? Have you heard anything in reply?

There was a pause of about five minutes. I started to get fidgety.

But then the notice that he was typing something popped up in the IM box.

Peter: Greetings, Disco.

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Peter: I sent my message, yes.

Peter: But I haven’t heard anything in reply.

Peter: I cannot guarantee I will.

I sighed.

Disco Friendly: Peter, you’re putting me in an impossible situation here.

Peter: Why don’t you come up? I’m not seeing anyone at the moment.

He sent a TP. I accepted it. The stone building at the top of the hill rezzed around me and Peter was lying on a small bed placed in the middle of a small, woodenfloored room. It was completely bare of any other furniture and illuminated only by the light coming in through a single open window.

Disco Friendly: You were sleeping?

Peter: Resting.

Disco Friendly: I’m sorry to disturb your rest.

Disco Friendly: What time will you start seeing visitors again?

Peter: Well there’s no set time.

Peter: I see them when I am ready to.

Disco Friendly: The queue has grown just in the last day.

Disco Friendly: If it keeps increasing at this rate, the sim will soon be full.

Peter: It’s not really a problem.

Peter: In a few days’ time we’ll bring another region online.

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Disco Friendly: You have another sim?

Peter: We do.

Peter: This is a high capacity region, it can hold over ninety people.

Peter: But we want to keep that to below fifty queuers here.

Peter: That way, people can still explore the rest of the island.

Disco Friendly: I thought the queue gets closed when it’s too long.

Peter: Not any more, Disco.

Peter: We’re out of that phase now.

Disco Friendly: And the new sim? That’s high capacity too?

Peter: So I understand.

Disco Friendly: That’s some growth you have planned.

Peter smiles.

Peter: Well, it’s only really the beginning.

Disco Friendly: And you’ll keep on seeing all these people?

Peter: Of course.

Disco Friendly: How do you make so much time for them?

Peter: Well it’s really just a question of not doing other things so much.

Disco Friendly: Aren’t there other things you’d rather be doing?

Peter: When there are other things I’d rather be doing then I do them.

Peter: I only speak to people when it’s the thing I most want to do.

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the queue gets above a certain number?

Peter: To do what?

Disco Friendly: To speak to those waiting to see you.

Peter: If they are waiting to see me then why would they want to speak to somebody else?

Disco Friendly: Peter, you must have done the maths here. How can you possibly spend time with every person in a queue of a hundred avatars?

Peter: The same way I can spend time with every person in a queue of a thousand or a hundred thousand, Disco.

Peter: One at a time.

Disco Friendly: That’s your vision? An endless queue?

An endless wait?

Disco Friendly: People standing weeks, months, years in a line to see you?

Peter: Why not? What’s wrong with that?

Disco Friendly: I don’t understand.

Peter: Maybe you’re over-thinking it.

Peter: There’s really not all that much to comprehend.

Disco Friendly: But it’s impossible.

Peter: Well, the queue already exists.

Disco Friendly: Yes. Twenty people.

Disco Friendly: Not twenty thousand.

Peter: So if space is taken care of, how long do you propose the queue would grow to if we never stopped people from joining?

Peter: Would people elect not to join it if it got to fifty thousand? A million? Ten million?

Disco Friendly: Are you actually serious?

Disco Friendly: Do you actually envisage creating something at that size and scale?

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Peter: Creating? I haven’t created a thing.

Peter: Only the space to contain people and the thing that resides at the end.

Peter: Which, as you can see, is as simple as I can possibly make it.

Disco Friendly: Why would people join such a queue?

Disco Friendly: Why would they wait for such a time?

Peter: Well that you would have to ask them.

I tried to visualise it: a huge, unending line of avatars crossing the metaverse, slowly inching forward; whole communities coming into being along the way as geographically disconnected people from all over the world spent years in each other’s company; identities being defined just by the time of joining. Would the queue attract the attention of the outside world such that people joined Second Life just to join the queue?

I saw books being written about the meaning of the queue. I saw movies and television documentaries being created about it. I saw people travelling in the real world to meet their virtual queuing buddies.

I saw merchandise. I saw internet companies trying to set up their own online prophet and competing queues.

I saw the scandals erupting about people finding ways to push in or queuers selling their place in the line for money. I saw people dying before they ever got anywhere near the head.

Disco Friendly: Crowds began gathering on the shore, waiting to see Jesus.

Peter: John, Chapter six, verse 22. The feeding of the five thousand.

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Peter: You know your scripture, Disco.

Disco Friendly: You’re trying to create a religion.

Disco Friendly: An online religion.

Disco Friendly: A digital pilgrimage.

Peter: Well I suppose it all depends on how you define ‘religion’.

Peter: Do you see any doctrine here?

Disco Friendly: The doctrine would be created from analyses of your conversations.

Disco Friendly: People would piece it together.

Disco Friendly: A new holy book would be created from all your discussions.

Disco Friendly: Scholars would compete with their interpretations.

Disco Friendly: Oh Peter, do you really know what you might be getting yourself into?

Disco Friendly: You’d lose control of your own words.

Disco Friendly: And you wouldn’t be safe.

Disco Friendly: The price for information about your RL whereabouts would rise and rise and rise.

Disco Friendly: Newspapers would offer thousands for an RL photograph.

Disco Friendly: There’d be hoaxers by the hundred claiming to be you, offering exclusive interviews for the right price.

Peter: And what of these things you describe?

Disco Friendly: You’d be hunted.

Peter: Then I’ll be hunted.

Disco Friendly: Are you quite certain there isn’t a Judas amongst your ‘friends’ here?

Peter: Well, one can only achieve so much certainty in life.

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Peter: After that, faith must suffice.

Disco Friendly: Faith?

Disco Friendly: Faith that what people tell you is representative of who they really are?

Disco Friendly: Faith in the goodness of the human spirit?

Peter: People take acts of faith all the time, Disco.

Peter: Is not falling in love precisely that?

Disco Friendly: Love is just a verb, Peter.

Disco Friendly: Love is an addiction to untruth.

Disco Friendly: Love commits people to terrible acts.

Disco Friendly: And so does religion Peter: I take it, then, that your familiarity with scripture is not representative of a spiritual connection to the universe?

Disco Friendly: Much to my parents’ displeasure, the only thing I learned from years of going to Sunday School is that the messages of the bible are little more than a code of behavioural conduct to keep the poor from rising and the rich in wealth.

Peter: Hast thou observed him who belieth religion?

That is he who repelleth the orphan, and urgeth not the feeding of the needy.

Disco Friendly: I don’t know that quote.

Peter: Qur'an, Chapter 107.

Disco Friendly: But there you go: the poor as needy.

Disco Friendly: The poor as needing to be fed.

Disco Friendly: The rich are directed to charity, not to solve the problems which create the wealth imbalance in the first place.

Disco Friendly: Not to eliminate that imbalance.

Perish the thought.

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Disco Friendly: Just feed the poor to keep them alive.

Disco Friendly: Feed the poor to make them grateful.

Disco Friendly: Because the rich need the poor to create their wealth for them. They do the work. They buy the products.

Peter: Humankind’s religions start from the status quo – from what is; from what is known – and try to work backwards; of course they do.

Peter: Hence God is portrayed as a human man with interest only in the affairs of human beings.

Peter: It will be interesting to see when we finally identify the existence of intelligent life on another planet how the major religions will adapt to that knowledge.

Peter: Don’t you think?

Peter: What interests me is how you derive from all this that there’s nothing more to the universe.

Peter: If attempts made to define an unknown truth from only what is known should fail, that is not to say that there exists nonetheless no truth.

Peter: A flea might believe that its dog understands it, but it being wrong about that doesn’t mean that there is nothing beyond the dog which understands fleas.

Disco Friendly: Show me God, then, Peter.

Disco Friendly: Explain to me why he – or whatever it is you imagine It to be – permits the unfairness and evil in the world.

Disco Friendly: Show me how that all fits in to God’s great, benevolent plan – and do so without recourse to any ‘God Moves In Mysterious Ways’ bullshit – and maybe I’ll join that queue of yours.

Peter: I claim no existence of God, Disco.

Peter: I make no claim, in fact, to there being any such 190

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thing as ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

Peter: There is only order and disorder; pattern and chaos.

Peter: These are the two forces which shape the universe. And us.

Peter: ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ are our own interpretations of that; they are only social constructs.

Peter: If we attempt to debate these things, endless arguments and conflict are the inevitable result.

Peter: Disorder creates more disorder.

Peter: The universe knows only that it seeks to escape disorder, not how.

Peter: Just as we each of us know that too, except we label it in our own subjective terms: peace, justice, victory…

Peter: Out of our desire to create order, we manufacture something only very local, something only very temporary.

Peter: We create semblances of order. In our countries.

In our communities. In our families. In our homes.

Peter: Temporary bubbles of only temporary solution.

Peter: Laws and traditions and values and belief: these are the foundations of the structures into which we settle and within which we find our comfort.

Peter: But, even in the fleetingly brief time of our lives, these still come into conflict with the structures of others: other families, other communities, other cultures, other sexualities, other countries.

Peter: We have to achieve something bigger, something more complete, something much longer lasting.

Peter: We have to create structure and order for all.

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Disco Friendly: Structure? Order?

Disco Friendly: Do you mean rule?

Disco Friendly: Do you mean a global dictatorship?

Peter: True order is created from the bottom up, Disco, never the top down.

Peter: One doesn’t command a flock of birds or a shoal of fish to turn as one together.

Peter: They turn as one because they’ve simplified and organised their connections with one another.

Peter: Anything which doesn’t come from the people is not of the people.

Peter: Order has to start there.

Disco Friendly: So you don’t believe in God? You don’t believe in a deity?

Disco Friendly: You’re essentially just a humanist?

Peter: Your concept of God – as it is for so many – implies something or someone – some being – outside of us. Something external. Something watching over us from heaven. Something not us but which looks like us.

Something wise and all-knowing and beautiful.

Peter: What if it’s not like that at all?

Peter: What if we’re all actually a part of God? Peter: What if God is not external to us and looking in, but actually created out of us?

Peter: What if God is the pattern and order which emerges out of chaos? What if God is to an individual as the shoal is to one fish – or one scale of one fish?

Peter: What if God is the universe?

Disco Friendly: The Gaia Hypothesis, but on a universe-wide scale?

Peter: Does that idea appeal to you?

Disco Friendly: Appeal? Perhaps.

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Disco Friendly: But do I believe it? No. Disco Friendly: I believe the universe is random and meaningless.

Peter: Are you sure about that?

Disco Friendly: Quite sure.

Disco Friendly: It emerged out of nothing and for no reason.

Disco Friendly: Even empty space, even time didn’t exist before it. There was no before. It’s impossible to comprehend.

Peter: Really? I think it’s perfectly straightforward to comprehend?

Disco Friendly: The Big Bang?

Peter: Of course.

Disco Friendly: I’m all ears, Peter. Do tell me.

Peter: You cannot conceive of something being created from nothing? You cannot conceive of there being no existence before creation?

Peter: And yet this happens all around us. Every moment of every day. Everywhere.

Peter: Every time new life sparks into existence.

Peter: The moment of your own conception was your very own big bang. Am I wrong?

Peter: The growth of your consciousness and identity your very own expansion.

Peter: You can accept that the thing which is fundamentally you did not exist before that point. Even time did not exist for you then.

Peter: Why, then, is it so difficult to accept for the universe?

Disco Friendly: That is actually a good metaphor.

Peter: What if it’s not a metaphor, Disco?

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Peter: What if the universe really is a single living entity?

Peter: What if, like us, it is just searching for order?

194

14 A car somewhere outside blew its horn. The sound roused me momentarily from a state of transfixion on my monitor. I took a moment to look around my room and bring myself back to reality. I gazed at my unmade bed and the clothes on the floor and the coffee mug next to my laptop and the apple core on top of my spiral bound notepad. What was it about this man (if it was indeed a man)? I’d contacted him to discuss the data storage device and its builder, and all I’d been focused on for the last half hour or so was this person and his bizarre plan – a plan that felt both incredible and yet somehow at the same time… credible.

Except how was it actually a plan? What were its details beyond just ‘form an orderly queue’? How could something so simple – however big it became – create anything that was practically meaningful for the world?

Disco Friendly: Peter, why do you do this?

Disco Friendly: This could end up consuming your whole life.

Disco Friendly: Can it possibly be worth that?

Peter: Are you serious? How could it possibly not be?

Peter: If one life could be the positive change that starts a chain reaction, bringing order and pattern to the world, how could that not be worth it, and many times 195

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over?

Peter: What decent human being could consider it any other way?

Disco Friendly: Is that why you do it? To bring order to the world?

Peter: Well I’m a human being, Disco. I cannot be dispassionate on matters concerning our tiny planet.

Peter: There is no benevolent God out there with the power to intervene. We must create our own benevolence.

Peter: If we don’t, nothing will step in to stop us from destroying ourselves.

Peter: You know, one possible explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that civilisations inevitably create their own annihilation.

Disco Friendly: The Fermi Paradox?

Peter: Enrico Fermi asked in the 1950s why, when the galaxy is full of billions of stars, we have never seen nor heard from extra-terrestrial life.

Peter: It is a sobering thought that in the sixty years since that question was posed we have continued to see and hear nothing, and over the same period of time our knowledge of the galaxy outside our solar system has expanded beyond belief.

Peter: We now know what Fermi could only assume – that there *are* planets which exist within the habitable zones of their stars.

Peter: With every year that passes, we discover more and more of them.

Peter: And yet… the skies are silent.

Disco Friendly: But you said earlier that you expect us to identify the existence of intelligent life on another 196

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planet.

Peter: What we will identify will be the presence of non-naturally occurring chemicals in the atmospheres of planets – for example, chlorofluorocarbons – made visible by the way their star’s light is refracted by their atmosphere as they pass between us and it.

Peter: The presence of such chemicals will indicate the footprint of industrialised intelligence, which will be enough to provoke debate over religious doctrine which considers Earth and human beings to have been the sole focus of The Creator.

Peter: What it won’t do is provide any evidence that that life still exists on those planets.

Peter: Even if what we detect are the signs of a living society rather than the leftovers of one which has caused its own extinction, there is still the time it has taken for that light to reach us to consider.

Peter: Tens, perhaps hundreds of years.

Peter: I didn’t suggest that life never starts anywhere else in the cosmos, Disco; only that perhaps it is incapable of averting its own destruction.

Disco Friendly: And you think a queue can make the crucial difference?

Peter: Well that we will have to see.

Peter: But let me ask you: do you think it could make things worse?

Disco Friendly: Maybe. If people start fighting over places.

Peter: What you are thinking of – what you described earlier on – these are things which already are.

Peter: Any new thing or person that achieves widespread popularity attracts that sort of attention.

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Peter: But attention these days is fleeting, wouldn’t you agree?

Peter: Celebrities are the human consumables of our modern ‘disposable society’.

Peter: We move from new thing to new thing to new thing.

Peter: Change in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, of course. To an extent, we need to be constantly changing.

Peter: But these changes are superficial, they serve only to mask that which remains the same and which benefits the existing power hiearchy.

Peter: It might be a different television programme you watch on Friday nights each year, but still you are watching TV. Peter: Still you are consuming the junk food output of the media conglomerates.

Peter: When what you really need, perhaps, is sustained sustenance.

Peter: Are not the more meaningful things in life those which endure beyond the brief flare of media attention?

Disco Friendly: But if the queue continued to grow and grow, the media would continue to focus on it, surely?

Peter: It’s impossible to predict exactly how that would develop, for sure.

Peter: But then why would I want to?

Peter: To try to predict something like that is to try to control it.

Peter: I have neither intention nor motive to control it.

Peter: Were I to do so, the queue would become something of my making – something imposed and 198

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manipulated.

Peter: But the queue is not mine; it belongs to those who create it.

Peter: This truth must remain self-evident above all other things.

Peter: No-one owns anyone’s pilgrimage other than the individual pilgrim.

Peter: All these attempts to corrupt this that you describe will be mistaking something simple and collective for something individual and complex, mistaking ownership as something external and motivated by material gain rather than something within, shared, evenly distributed and motivated only by the need to feel meaningfully connected.

Peter: One does not achieve a better understanding of the emergent behaviour of the shoal from exposing the selfish behaviour of any individual fish.

Disco Friendly: But, Peter, one might achieve a better understanding of a flock by studying its shepherd.

Peter: Which is precisely why I avoid such metaphor, Disco.

Peter: I am not a shepherd.

Peter: I am not a leader.

Peter: I might represent an initial direction for the shoal, but it is the shoal’s integrity and growing interconnectedness which in the end will become the most important thing about it.

Peter: This must not be about any one belief or rational argument.

Peter: People are predisposed to finding ingenious ways of dismissing argument they disagree with, however logical it might be.

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Disco Friendly: We’re back to cognitive dissonance theory.

Peter: Yes. Peter: This ability served a purpose during the era for which our bodies were designed by evolution; it helped create group identity and thus strengthened group cohesion.

Peter: The rightness or wrongness of any particular belief was neither here nor there.

Peter: But that same tribe mentality was never designed for people in control of nuclear weapons. The worst that could happen then was two tribes extinguishing each other, not the destruction of an entire planet.

Peter: And thus we are presented with one of many evolutionary ironies we see today: that mechanism which once improved our chances of survival now threatens it.

Peter: Debate and logical argument are held up as the benchmark of civilisation because they get as close to objective truth and integrity as it’s possible to within a socially constructed world.

Peter: But this overlooks the fact that people are driven more to protect themselves and their self-worth than they are to accept different ways of thinking about something.

Peter: Self-worth – or self-esteem, if you prefer – is somewhat mystifying in its existence. What purpose does it serve?

Peter: But if you consider it as one’s own assessment of the worth one holds to a larger group or community, thereby motivating oneself to achieve a better 200

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integration, its evolutionary usefulness becomes more clear.

Peter: The problem is, we no longer live in the tribes which might both protect that self-esteem in the first place and restore it when it becomes damaged.

Peter: We live in smaller and smaller units. Or alone.

Peter: We no longer have those connections. We no longer have that mechanism.

Peter: Thus it can become a negative feedback loop, reinforcing and reinforcing itself until life becomes intolerable.

Peter: We have to do whatever lies within our means to protect it.

Peter: And rational debate plays very little role within this.

Peter: Would you expect a perfectly logical argument to convince a man or woman that they should jump from a tall building to their death?

Peter: Why, then, would we expect one to convince a man or woman that they should be made redundant or be paid less or not receive a costly or unproven treatment?

Peter: Why would we expect one to convince someone that they should pay more taxes or that global warming is real or that wealth inequality is the biggest correlate of instability?

Peter: Debate does not alter fundamental convictions when one can so easily find others with the same belief.

Only direct, personal experience can do that.

Peter: Some of us once romanticised that the internet would bring people together, that the sheer availability of information would make all real things visible and 201

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obvious.

Peter: Once people had access to all the information, we reasoned, then they would understand.

Peter: But this argument only works on the presupposition that all people seek only the truth.

Peter: In fact, all it has enabled the majority of people to do is find more easily other people who support their own convictions.

Peter: Distant, unexaminable people.

Peter: The connections made in our increasingly isolated society become even more brittle and tenuous.

Peter: Perhaps because of that, we become all the more fiercely protective of them, and all the more bitter and vitriolic when they are betrayed.

Peter: The internet has deepened rather than reduced divide.

Peter: And we are lost, confused, helpless, angry.

Peter: The feeling that things have gone wrong, that the direction is false, that the system is somehow broken; the feeling of discontent with our more and more materialistic world grows stronger and stronger.

Peter: It would be one thing if this were only the case in developing countries, where one might argue people have more to be discontent about.

Peter: In fact, it is in many of the wealthiest nations that this growing disillusionment is most profoundly felt.

Peter: The size of the gap between a nation’s most and least wealthy is the best predictor of its mental ill-health – even where the wealth of those least well-off far exceeds the wealth of those in other places.

Peter: A man who earns a thousand dollars a month in 202

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a place where many might earn ten thousand is less happy than a man who earns fifty dollars a month in a place where most people earn about the same.

Peter: In these so called ‘wealthy’ countries, Disco, we have been socialised – programmed by what we see and hear everywhere around us – to constantly compare ourselves to others and to derive our sense of self-worth principally from this evaluation.

Peter: When economic depression hits these countries in particular, the resilience of its citizens is paper-thin.

Peter: People look for answers.

Peter: Right-wing nationalism – which we now see rising yet again across the globe – is often a consequence of this because minority outgroup members are the easiest targets for politicians.

Peter: Like the schoolyard bully who picks on the least-connected child in the school, they point towards those most unable to defend themselves in order to protect their security and to improve their rating.

Peter: Turn the 80% against the 19% and the secret 1% with all the power remains unscathed.

Peter: Divide and rule. It has worked for centuries.

Peter: In times of prosperity we ridicule nationalists.

In times of austerity we propel them to power and place weapons of mass destruction in their hands.

Peter: Disco, we are one race, clinging to a speck of cosmic dust; the odds are stacked against us.

Peter: Division only adds to chaos, only detracts from disorder. It has to end.

Peter: But it will not end through policy, through law, through rule, through punishment.

Peter: However well-intentioned, those things will just 203

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be more of the same.

Peter: The grip of the lawmakers is weakening; even though they know this through their night terrors, they cannot bring themselves to admit it.

Peter: The truth is just too terrifying.

Peter: The mechanics of entropy have an unstoppable momentum now.

Peter: No change from above can truly alter that.

Peter: It has to come from the people.

Disco Friendly: I say again, Peter: you hope to change all this with a queue?

Peter: The queue can only be a catalyst, Disco.

Peter: Just a simple, shared idea.

Peter: Like the gentle beat of a drum bringing everyone in step.

Peter: Order creating order.

Peter: Non-manipulative.

Peter: No doctrine to sign up to.

Peter: No arguments to refute.

Peter: Nothing to prove or disprove.

Peter: A joining; nothing more.

Peter: Of the people and for the people. *All* people.

Peter: Not competing with anything. Not fighting anything. Not trying to repress or suppress anything.

Peter: It is *not* a protest.

Peter: No-one will recruit to it. no-one will promote it.

Peter: Joining will always be a personal decision.

Peter: What will come out of it, I really can’t say.

Peter: But I ask you again: can it make things any worse?

Peter: And might it – just might it – grow gently, slowly, gracefully until the direction of order becomes 204

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too great, too strong, too powerful to resist.

Peter: Might pattern in the end become infectious?

Peter: Reorganising, reconfiguring, re-energising everything around it.

Peter: Answer me honestly, Disco: would you oppose it?

Peter: Search your soul for your feelings. Does it threaten you?

Search? No search was necessary. I knew that the conversation of the last hour pushed right into the rift within me that opened up whenever I stopped to think for too long about the endless, self-perpetuating cycles of the world. It was that rift which had caused me to sigh hopelessly during my conversation with Fred at the Black Vulture a few days ago. Like so many others, I’d learned successfully the art of forcing it shut when it took me unawares; quite simply, there was no other way of dealing with it. What else was one to do? How else did one deal with a problem so large and so pervasive that there was absolutely nothing any single person could do about it?

No search was necessary. Even though a large part of me still thought his idea was preposterous, I wanted Peter to be right.

Disco Friendly: I would not oppose it.

Disco Friendly: It does not threaten me.

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15 The data storage device. It lurked in the back of my mind uncomfortably, the elephant in our conversation. I no longer wanted to talk about it. But I had to.

Disco Friendly: Peter, I have to bring us back to the here and now.

Disco Friendly: I’m sorry, but we have to decide what we’re going to do about the data storage device and its creator.

Disco Friendly: I know you don’t want people to be hurt.

Disco Friendly: But also it’s in the interests of your movement to take action.

Disco Friendly: If people should die because of an attack carried out and it emerges that you withheld knowledge which could have been used to prevent the attack, you’ll be torn apart by the press.

Disco Friendly: Your momentum will be brought to a halt before it has any chance to grow into anything unstoppable.

Peter: Disco, please stop.

Disco Friendly: I’m sorry?

Peter: There is no movement. Have you heard nothing that I’ve said?

Peter: My friend: I know you strive for good, I know 206

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you want to help people; but have I not just explained how all these counter-actions are just more disorder?

Peter: They might bring temporary respite to a few, but in the long term the tit-for-tat, brute-force tactics of large governments only build more disorder and decay.

Peter: Of course I don’t want people to be hurt. I will help you all I can.

Peter: But I will not betray the promise I made to this man.

Peter: More to the point, I will not impose my desire over his.

Disco Friendly: I won’t be able to protect you, Peter.

Disco Friendly: As soon as my employers know about what you know about, they’ll come for you. You must know that.

Peter: Then don’t tell them.

Peter: Or tell them, Disco.

Peter: It’s your choice, it has to be.

Peter: You may tell them I will not resist their arrest.

Disco Friendly: Please, peter.

Disco Friendly: If you know you’ll end up giving it to them, why not just give it to them now?

Disco Friendly: What have you got to gain?

Peter: It isn’t about what I have to gain; it’s about what I have to lose.

I thumped the table in frustration and looked around my room as if somewhere amongst my clutter I’d spot the answer to this predicament. My gaze fell upon one of the newspaper clippings I kept pinned to a corkboard next to my bed, a strategically positioned display of the huge crimes I’d so far prevented whilst working for Fred 207

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that I could look at first thing on those mornings when I awoke with the word MURDERER ringing in my head.

Disco Friendly: Peter, I understand why this is hard for you.

Disco Friendly: But please take a moment to think about what’s at stake here.

Disco Friendly: The first meaningful intelligence job I did for the Americans was to crack the communication method of a group of terrorists who were using SL to plan an attack.

Disco Friendly: They’d built a whole simulation of a shopping centre so that they could rehearse it virtually without having to communicate text that could be intercepted.

Disco Friendly: They planned to attack in the run-up to Christmas. The shopping centre had a large set of escalators in the central area and there was a Christmas grotto built underneath them.

Disco Friendly: The plan these men had was to detonate explosives simultaneously at the top and bottom of the escalators.

Disco Friendly: They wanted to drop the whole thing on top of the grotto. Anyone inside it at the time or in the queue would have been killed. Not to mention probably many of the people on the escalators.

Disco Friendly: They were targeting children and their families. I emphasise this not to try to demonise the terrorists further. I emphasise it because it’s my personal, private, proudest thing that I prevented those children from dying.

Disco Friendly: Whatever else happens in my life I 208

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know that I at least saved them.

Disco Friendly: Whatever you might say about order and disorder; whatever view you might have about the long term good – and I’m not saying that your view is wrong, just that it is a view – there is an importance to human life that does not require justification, philosophical or otherwise.

Disco Friendly: And actually in this particular case the disorder which resulted from my actions was far smaller than the disorder which would have resulted had the attack taken place – both from the point of view of the immediate victims and from the inevitable subsequent reprisals.

Disco Friendly: If we don’t do anything to prevent whatever it is that’s being planned then we might well ultimately be colluding with disorder far more than if we do.

Disco Friendly: Prevention is surely less disorder than reaction.

Disco Friendly: And if we’re resolved that someone somewhere has to be sacrificed, then why shouldn’t it be the one coward who could make a difference and won’t instead of the many innocent who know and can do nothing?

There was a pause of about three minutes. Finally, Peter responded: Peter: You speak well, Disco. You speak well.

Peter: I am one of those for whom rational argument does make a difference.

Peter: At least, I like to think I am.

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Peter: I will think some more about this.

Peter: But understand that I must remain true to my principles.

Disco Friendly: I’m going to give you another 24 hours.

Disco Friendly: After that, I will pass on information to the people who have commissioned this work.

Disco Friendly: If you can’t change your mind, please do anything that you can do during that time to convince the builder to meet with me.

Disco Friendly: Tell him that you are threatened yourself if you have to. Maybe that will motivate him.

Peter: I will do my best.

Disco Friendly: Thank you.

Disco Friendly: I truly hope that we can resolve this.

Peter: As do I. Peter: Farewell, my friend.

The room disappeared with the swoosh-swoosh of the teleporter and I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes and listened to the thudding of my heart in my head. I didn’t believe for one moment that Peter would change his mind. Why was I giving him this extra time?

I opened my eyes and looked back at the screen, expecting to see myself again in the debrief clearing with the logs around the fire. Instead, I saw that I was in a beige and brown coloured room.

It took a moment to register, but then I realised.

I had been summoned. I was in Fred’s virtual office.

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16 At that moment, my doorbell rang. It was nearly two in the afternoon, but I hadn’t yet changed out of the t-shirt and panties I’d worn to bed the previous night. I jumped into the nearest sweat pants I could locate and went to the door, checking through the peep hole first.

“I’ve got a package for Rebecca Styles,” the delivery guy told me when I opened it.

I took the box. “Yep, that’s me.” I signed for it. He thanked me and left, and I took it back into my bedroom.

On screen, Disco was still alone in Fred’s office and probably would remain so for some time. That was the way it worked. The summoning teleport would take me there involuntarily and Fred would then be notified that I was awaiting him. Whilst it was apparently ok for me to be dragged against my will to this place, the same sense of urgency did not apply to him. He’d show up whenever he had finished whatever he was doing at that particular moment.

So I opened the box. Inside was an Oculus Rift virtual reality head set.

I was five years old again for a few sudden moments and. It was Christmas Day. All thoughts of saving the innocent and protecting Peter’s plan just instantly evaporated. I lifted the device out of its packaging almost with reverence. I had wanted one of these for 211

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ages. Initially, all I could appreciate was just how shiny it was.

A note enclosed read: Thought it was time you got with the 21 st century.

F Straight away I logged out of SL – I’d still be back in Fred’s office when I came back on – and downloaded the Rift-enabled viewer. I plugged everything in and watched the headset power up. I logged back into SL on the new viewer and activated Head Mounted Display mode, and on my laptop screen not one but two eggshaped windows into the metaverse appeared.

I activated first person perspective and took a deep breath.

I put the headset on.

And I was in the office. I was in it.

The build had been crude and basic back in 2007 when I’d first encountered it; by modern standards it was positively ancient. There wasn’t a single piece of mesh furniture and the chairs and table were all blocky and angular. Right now, however, it all looked amazing; even the beige and brown walls. It was there, physically close to me. I couldn’t help but reach out with my hand and try to touch the table in front of me. I laughed. I shivered from the goose-bumps.

“I see you got my little gift.” The voice came from behind me. I turned my head and the world moved accordingly; for a moment, it made me feel giddy.

Fred walked around the desk and took his usual seat across the table from me. “How can you tell?” I asked him. “From my head movements?”

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“It tells me on my radar,” he replied, dryly.

I laughed. “You’re wearing one too?”

“I am. I’m not entirely sure what the benefits of this are to us at this particular moment in time, but I do now have a budget and one likes to keep abreast of what’s new in the field.”

“But it’s all so… real,” I said. “This changes… everything.”

“This is just the beginning. Stick a modified Xbox Kinect on your desk and you’ll have body movement tracking, maybe even facial expression replication in time. Then there’s kinaesthetic gloves that will enable you to use a virtual keyboard and generate haptic feedback to simulate basic touch. A revolution is just around the corner, Thursday. That’s the Crescent Bay prototype I sent you, by the way. It’ll be released in a few weeks.”

“I love it. I just… wow.”

“Pretty neat, huh?”

“Even your shitty office impresses me. Though it looks enormous like this.”

“The above-avatar viewing angle Linden adopted for SL resulted in some strange scaling in the metaverse,” Fred said. “Thus we have inhumanly large people, massive furniture and huge empty spaces. Once the Rift becomes commonplace we’ll start to see more and more places shrunk down and cosyfied.”

“Any chance you might invest in something mesh for this room?” I asked him. “Even a metal filing cabinet would add a touch.” I thought about the cabinets behind Mrs Crimson’s desk.

“I was actually thinking about redecorating,” he 213

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replied. “Perhaps something glowing white to infinity.

Futuristic-looking metals. A splash of neon.”

“You’ve been watching too many movies,” I remarked. “Well, at least you finally upgraded your appearance. That flexi-tie was really starting to get on my nerves.”

“Oh, you like the new suit?” he asked. “I had to bring the director in here last month and thought I ought to make as good an impression as possible, at least concerning avatar appearance.”

“You’ve properly got their attention now, huh?”

“For the moment,” he replied. “I don’t take it for granted. There’s particular interest right now in that data storage device I showed you. Which brings me to the reason for this meeting.”

“Right.”

“Sit down, won’t you?”

“Um,” I said, “I’m not sure how to.”

“Use your mouse – just like you would ordinarily.”

I reached out blindly with my hands and found the edge of my desk and then the mouse I keep plugged in to my laptop. The pointer sprang into action in front of me and I felt suddenly giddy again at the appearance of this two-dimensional artefact in the three-dimensional world.

It had no depth to it and my brain interpreted this as though it was moving around on a flat glass plane between me and the rest of the world. I positioned it roughly on the chair and right-clicked. I sat.

“Bravo,” he said. “So anyway, it’s been over a week now. What have you learned?”

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me quite so casually. Fred had said he couldn’t see the benefits just yet to interacting using the Rift; I realised that he probably hadn’t been telling me quite the whole truth. For all I knew, he had a voice-stress analysis device working on me right now too.

Keep as close to the truth as possible, I reminded myself.

“I’ve learned loads about the sim and the guy that runs it, but nothing yet about the storage device. I’m sorry.” Technically, that was more-or-less true.

“Nothing? Nothing at all?” The disappointment in his voice was clearly audible. “No-one there saw anything?”

“Well I did find a building platform above the sim.”

Again, that was true. “But I didn’t see the device there. I didn’t see anything there at all. I’m getting to know the guy in charge.”

“Have you tried just asking him?” he questioned.

That wouldn’t be easy to respond to without lying. I threw in a diversion.

First of all, a deliberate pause. Then I said, “Fred, did you do any checking up on that region before you sent me there?”

“Why do you ask?” he replied.

I faked frustration. “Can’t you just answer the question?”

“Wow. Don’t I get any credit in the bank for sending you the Rift?”

“Sorry,” I told him. “I’m just really curious.”

“We examined it briefly. I sent my intern to take a look.”

“You have an intern now?”

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“I’d prefer an experienced analyst any day.”

“So what did they report?”

“Well let me think. Nature sim. Some sort of Christianity link. A couple of avatars hanging around in robes. That’s more or less it, so far as I can remember.

To be honest, she talked more about how it was possible to change her outfit in SL. May I enquire now why you’re asking me this?”

“So it was definitely the data device you wanted me to look into and not just the organisation operating from that sim?”

“What have you discovered?” he asked. “You know full well it’s the people who are using the device that I’m interested in more than the device itself. Are you saying that it’s them?”

“There’s nothing whatsoever to suggest that it’s them,” I answered quickly. Possibly a little too quickly.

“I was just wondering if the whole data device thing was just a pretext for sending me in there. Actually, I was starting to wonder if the device actually existed in the first place.” That last sentence, planned in my head as poetic embellishment, was a definite lie if they did have equipment monitoring what I said. Stupid.

He paused for a moment, which only made my heart beat faster. “I assure you,” he said finally, “that the device was no pretext. Whether it exists or not I of course can’t say for certain, but the photo I showed you exists and I can say that we received it – exactly as I told you – in an anonymous email. What have you learned about this group that’s causing you to ask this?”

So I told him about the queue. I told him about Peter’s theories about order and disorder, about the universe 216

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being a living creature, and about how he believed a line of waiting people could be the force for good that the world needed. I told him that the queue was indeed starting to grow.

He listened in silence. It took me about twenty minutes to get through it all.

“I see,” he said finally. “Yes, I agree that that’s all rather interesting.

“Do you remember the first conversation we had when you were on the Isle of Wight?” he asked me. “I talked about the coming era of virtual living and what virtual terrorism might look like in the future.”

“Yes I do, very clearly,” I replied. “I miss the you that was interested in such things rather than the you these days that only thinks about foiling real world bomb plots.” Which was true.

“As do I. Though foiling real world bomb plots is what gets my office funding and I find it hard to disagree with it being an issue of importance.”

“Indeed,” I said.

“Well here we are. This is what I was talking about.

The virtual world as an actual living place is a step closer. Oh, the Rift will only be a tweak to lifestyle at first. It’ll all be about virtual gaming and the potential of point of view stereoscopic pornographic movies at first – men, I can almost guarantee you, will be falling over themselves to get hold of the headset once they realise they can experience porn as though they’re actually being ridden on their real world beds. It’ll take a while for the implications of this technology to become apparent, but apparent it will become. I just can’t see it happening any other way.”

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“Do you see this group as a security threat?”

“The queue people? Not if they are as they say they are. We’ll keep an eye on them, of course. Perhaps that will be an ongoing job for you. Fuck it, Thursday; I might be an intelligence officer, but I’m a human being too. How can I deny what this guy says about the state of the world? What we do now is constant firefighting – there’s no point in pretending anything else to be true.

Amongst friends. If he wants to come along and have a go at reducing the chaos which risks bringing everything down around us – and can do so through peaceful methods – then I personally say good luck to him. I have no corporate bank account to defend.

“But if he or anyone else working on that island has anything to do with that data storage device then to hell with their theory of the universe as an entity. I need to know, Thursday, and I need to know soon. I’ve got people breathing down my neck over this. Virtual world intelligence has suddenly become a career aspiration so there are plenty of ladder-climbers waiting on the rungs below me for a chance to take a swipe at my ankles. If you can’t find your way to this through gentle infiltration then you’re going to just have to come right out and ask this guy. I’m going to get a monitor put on his activity right away plus I want a list from you of all the people working for him so I can start keeping an eye on their communication too.”

“Can’t you get your intern to do that?” I complained.

“Be careful what you wish for,” he cautioned me.

“She’s like a drunk robot in there right now, but she learns fast. They all do, these days. That’s why we hire them. Frankly, they scare the life out me.

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“Get me that list,” he told me, standing. “I want it by tomorrow, and as complete as you can make it. Then regular updates after that. I have to get to a meeting now. And good work on this. You’ve told me something I didn’t know, and I’ll be thinking about it for a while to come.”

He paused for a moment, and I thought he was going to vanish, but then he said, “Did you ever hear about quantum entanglement?”

“No.” “I went to a briefing on it just a few weeks ago. Most of it was above my head, but the gist of it is that they can pair two particles somehow so that whenever they change the spin-state of one then the spin-state of the other changes in exactly the same way.”

“What’s so special about that?”

“The change is instant, Thursday. Once the particles are paired, you can move them apart as far as you like and the change will still always be instant. You could move them to the opposite ends of the universe and it would still be instant.”

“Faster than the speed of light?” I asked.

“Instant,” he repeated. “If they exploit this in time, Mars mission astronauts will be able to have real-time communication with Earth instead of the eight to forty minute delays they’d normally have depending on the relative positions of Mars and Earth around the sun.

That’s not why we’re interested in it. We’re interested because it terrifies us. Entangled communication would be impossible for us to snoop on because there’s no medium through which the signal travels. Well, there is no ‘signal,’ as such, in the first place.”

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“Fascinating,” I said.

“Yeah. Anyway. It makes you think, though, doesn’t it? The universe as a living entity. Hmm.” He disappeared. A few seconds later the swooshswoosh of the teleport sounded and I was back on Peter’s sim in the campfire clearing. This time, there were five avatars gathered on the logs and their text comments started swimming up in front of me, inducing the same giddiness that the mouse pointer previously had caused.

I didn’t even attempt to read any part of what they were saying. I fumbled with the menu to find the movement controls so I could get out of their chat range. It took an age to locate them – I hadn’t used mouse control for movement since about ten second’s worth of rapidly abandoned experimentation back in my induction as a brand new resident on Orientation Island. Additionally, I hadn’t used an official Linden viewer for years (it would be a cold day in hell before I accepted the obsolescence of the pie menu). When I did finally get the arrows up on screen, my subsequent movement was clumsy as hell, but I managed to stumble my way out of the clearing and into the woods.

And then I could appreciate it, and it was all quite magnificent. I stood for a moment stunned by the beauty of a properly Rift-optimised environment.

And I thought about Fred’s parting comment.

And I thought about that monitor being set up on Peter’s communication. I supposed it wouldn’t be long before they knew exactly who he was and where he was, and if they chose to hack into his email accounts then they would find his communication from yesterday with the builder of the data storage device.

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Perhaps they would only monitor what he sent from this point onwards, but what did I know about such protocol? It seemed to me that I had betrayed him, despite my best efforts.

The wood was still; sun beams slanted through the gaps in the trees. I decided I needed to see something like this for real for a while, and I logged out.

221

17 Once Stransky had uploaded the pictures I’d taken of Vincent Tasse, I lay back on my bed in the hotel on Avenue du Canada and released the tension of the evening in a long, deep sigh. I decided I needed a shower. Stransky got up to leave.

“Don’t be daft,” I told him. “I’ll change in the bathroom. Besides, we’ve both seen each other naked now.”

Under scalding hot water, I leaned wearily against the tiled wall and tried to not see the face of the young Frenchman. Despite his initial fear and plea-bargaining, it shocked me how easy it had all been in the end. I tried to not see his face at the moment he succumbed to the inevitability of his orgasm and surrendered what he knew was in his better interests for the intensity of this particular short-term moment. I hadn’t laid a finger on him. It was all so depressing.

I came out of the bathroom in a gown with a towel wrapped around my head. Stransky was just shutting his laptop. “Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry about Herriot.”

“Nothing to apologise for,” I replied. “You were right and I was wrong.”

“For what it’s worth, I would have preferred it if you had been right.”

I plugged in my hair dryer. “Well, it seems my view 222

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of people is overly optimistic. Ironic, don’t you think, for a murderer?”

He waited until I’d finished my hair before saying, “Listen. About Inch’s IM logs.”

“Oh yes. I’d been meaning to talk to you about that.”

I sat down on the bed next to him. “I think today qualifies as me having completed my first job. I’ll grant you now that Herriot didn’t count.”

“Well actually I was going to give them to you for that anyway,” he told me. “You put the work in, there’s no doubt about that. And there was always the chance that you were right about him. Until today, of course.”

My heart skipped a beat at the thought that I would have them soon. “So… do you have them for me?”

“Well that’s the thing.” He broke eye contact and looked down. “It would appear that I don’t have them anymore.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“They’re gone,” he said. “Deleted.”

“What the fuck do you mean, deleted? Why did you delete them?”

He grimaced. “I promise you it wasn’t intentional. I just hadn’t thought about them for ages until you brought the subject up. I assumed they’d still be there. I told you all those logs were stored in a shared drive, right?”

“Right,” I said, between gritted teeth.

“So I’ve changed my main PC twice since then.”

“And you didn’t copy the logs across?”

“I thought I had copied everything, but the folder that that old sharing service used was in the root of C drive rather than the Documents and Settings folder. I totally 223

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forgot about that when I copied what I thought was everything over.”

I closed my eyes and counted to ten.

“When I found that they were gone,” he continued, “I looked for the website where you used to be able to access your folder contents online, but I’m afraid that company folded long ago. I’m really sorry, Thursday. I don’t know what to say.”

I let out a long, slow breath. “Okay. You didn’t mean to do it. It’s fine.”

We sat in silence for a few moments. He scratched his ear, awkwardly. “Why did you want them, anyway?”

“For absolutely no good reason,” I replied. “But look: that woman turned me into a murderer and I’m still struggling to comprehend that.”

He said, cautiously, “Thursday, no-one made you-“ “I know that, Stransky!” I snapped. “Of course I know that. No-one put a gun to my head and ordered me to kill him. But I wanted to know what she was like. I wanted to know what she was like really. Herriot talked about the hidden and the presented, and I want to know her hidden.”

“How would that help?”

“I spent a night with her,” I told him. I hadn’t properly explained this to him before. “Before she met Strasnky. A year before. It was the most incredible night I’d ever had in SL, Spence. Then she disappeared. I spent months and months wondering if I’d ever see her again, and then she turned up out of nowhere one evening and John-Paul fucking Barnaby swept in and snatched her up right in front of me. I could have stayed with her that night and maybe none of that would have 224

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happened, but oh no: I chose instead to do my shift in a fucking pizza restaurant; I surrendered time with the woman I thought was the love of my life for seven hours at minimum wage because I thought she’d still be there when I got back. She more-or-less told me that she’d still be there when I got back.

“I’m not kidding myself that this would be a game changer, but I want to know how that happened. How? What could Stransky possibly have said to her that was so convincing, so extraordinary, so incredible that in that moment that my back was turned they became partners?

What was it about her that appealed to him? What was it that she said that activated these apparently amazing words?”

I put my head in my hands for a moment. “So I guess I’ll never know now.” I sighed. “I know. It’s probably for the best.”

“I’m really sorry,” he said again. “I feel awful.”

“It’s fine. I doubt that the answer would have satisfied me anyway.”

He rolled over to the far side of the bed and stood up.

“I’m turning in. We need to be back in Cherbourg for nine in the morning tomorrow.” He kissed the top of my head as he passed me on his way out.

“For what it’s worth,” he added from the doorway, “I don’t think the answer would have satisfied you either.”

I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I kept seeing Vincent Tasse’s face. I tried until two in the morning and then I gave up and took a walk along the canal, resolving to catch some sleep instead on the ferry the next day. I stood for a while leaning against a railing and looking at 225

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the reflections of light on the water and thinking about this new life I was on the first rung of. It still felt strange to not have to worry. I supposed I could plan again, if I wanted to now. Not that I was really the planning sort.

In fact, I had no idea what I wanted to do next.

Just at that moment, my phone started ringing. I didn’t recognise the number.

“Hello?”

“What are you doing in France, Thursday?”

“A job, Fred,” I replied. “I don’t only work for you.”

“Listen,” he said, “the shopping centre thing has changed everything. They’re talking about expanding me. An office at first – three or four people – but who knows where it could lead? Maybe even a whole department.”

“That’s great,” I told him.

“Thanks to you, Thursday. Thanks to you. The Director himself asked me to pass on his thanks for your work.”

“Tell him I’m very flattered.”

“Your help won’t be forgotten. Why do you want to work for anyone else anyway? We pay you well.”

“I like to keep busy,” I said.

“Just so long as it’s not for the Russians. Or the Germans. Or the French. Come to think of it, is that why you’re in France?”

“Calm yourself, Fred,” I told him. “I’m not working for any other intelligence agency.”

“Good. Keep it that way. Now, I have a new job for you.”

“Go on,” I said.

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What was stopping me, I pondered the next day during our return journey across the Channel, from finding Inch’s new avatar once more and picking up my plan where it had been interrupted? My grand, devious scheme on discovering her new account had been to make her fall in love with me and then to reveal myself as the woman who had murdered her lover. Glorious avengement. Pathetic revenge. I knew it was for the best that Stransky had lost the IM logs. It was time I moved on from all that.

“You look lost in thought,” he told me as he came back from the bar with his second latte of the crossing.

“I was just thinking that I’m glad you lost those logs,” I said. “Inch is in the past now.”

“Good.

I was worried that the new StranskyThursday partnership might have resurrected unhelpful thoughts about her.”

“It did a little. But I think I’m over that now.”

“I’d suggest that maybe it’s time you found yourself someone, except I suppose a job that requires you to visit the houses of serial internet sex offenders isn’t exactly an easy occupation to bring up when any potential romantic interest asks you what it is you do for a living.”

“I guess it’s as well then that I have a fuck buddy for the time being to sate my short-term appetite,” I told him.

“Right, yes.” He cleared his throat. Later, not five minutes after we’d entered his flat, I called upon that favour. This time, though, I was unable to find my own climax. The face of Vincent Tasse was stuck to the inside of my eyelids. I couldn’t stop seeing him cum.

227

18 I took a route through the park and then made for the waterfront; I followed the curve of the River Medway as far as I could. I ran double the distance that I normally covered, hoping that the pain in my legs and the sheer physical exhaustion would distract me from thinking about betraying Peter.

It didn’t.

He was going to send another message to the builder.

If Fred got his monitor set up before he did that (I had no idea how long such things took, whether they involved complicated hacks, fake telephone repair men turning up to install cabled devices or the flicking of a single switch) then that message would be intercepted. Peter was in the shit.

Unless he could send a message that couldn’t be intercepted.

As soon as this thought entered my head, I wondered how I could possibly have thought that it would be any other way. Peter would use the very data storage device I was trying to find out about to communicate with the builder. Well wouldn’t he? Why on Earth would a man scared for his life leave any sort of email address that could be tracked back to him when he’d created an almost perfectly secure communications method. I was an idiot.

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And why would he leave a copy of his device on Peter’s land, where a single right-click would be all that was required to determine its creator? Peter might have promised him that they’d eject anyone who came close to it before they got a chance to do so, but no builder would ever agree to such a plan; it was far too prone to error.

Although I’d failed myself to get that information, I’d come pretty damn close and there were probably techniques I could have used to close in on the device more quickly. No. There was only one safe way to make the device completely untraceable, and that was if it was in Peter’s own name as creator. It would have been simple enough – albeit time consuming – for him to recreate it if he was given the scripts in notecards and told to copy and paste the text across into the prims. In fact, why not create the whole thing from a single, copied and pasted script? If Peter pasted the text of the script from a notecard into a new prim he’d just created, the routine once activated could in theory create the entire device from scratch – after all, there was no property of regular prims that couldn’t be defined through script.

That had to be what they’d agreed to. It had to be.

Once constructed, Peter would enter a message into the device and it would then send out a specific signal across the grid that it had a message to be retrieved. The builder would be in possession of a separate device that listened for this signal.

All of which meant that the builder had to still be active in SL, albeit probably using a different account.

This was assuming that he’d stuck to the plan as agreed and not fled the metaverse entirely, but what man in fear for his life would disappear so completely as to be 229

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untouchable to the one person he’d approached for help?

My guess was that he’d received Peter’s communication from the previous day loud and clear.

When I got back to my flat I checked my phone and found an IM from Peter forwarded from SL to my registered email address. It said just, “Come now.” It was communication which might have been seen by Fred and his team; but all the same, bingo.

I logged in straight away, back to my last location in the woods, but this time without the Rift. I opened up an IM box with Peter whilst the trees coloured in around me.

Disco Friendly: I got your message.

Peter: Disco, the builder has agreed to communicate with you, but he won’t reveal his identity.

Peter: You must come with me to the building platform.

I received a TP a few seconds later. I accepted it and moved immediately up to 4,000 metres. Peter appeared to be standing completely by himself, but then I looked more closely at the platform surface around his feet and spotted a tiny black box.

Peter: Can you see it?

Disco Friendly: Yes. Peter: This is the device you have been asking about.

Peter: You will see that I am its creator, however this is not actually the case.

Disco Friendly: It’s okay, I worked that out.

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created the device for you.

Peter: Correct: Peter: He will only communicate with us via this device.

He rezzed a keyboard device large enough that the keys could be clicked on reasonably easily. Next to it, a ‘screen’ appeared that looked like a nightclub’s best dressed/most sexy/top tipper leader-board. It had three rows of about thirty characters.

Peter: Type.

Peter: This is your conversation.

I entered, “I am here,” clicking on the prim keys with my mouse pointer one at a time, and hit return. Perhaps ‘easily’ wasn’t exactly the right word. There was a wait of about a minute or so, and then a reply appeared on the display, the letters coming into first blurry then sharp existence.

“You are the American?”

“I work for the Americans,” I typed. “I am British.”

Another wait.

“I didnt know what he wanted the HD for.”

“I know that,” I replied. “I need to know who he is.”

Two minutes passed.

“He will know it was me who told you.”

“You dont know that.” The lack of an apostrophe key niggled. “He might have told others. He might have another builder.”

Another minute, then: “You dont know THAT. He will hack my account. He 231

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will find me.”

“If he had good hackers,” I replied, “he would have built his own device.”

Two minutes passed. Then another. Finally: “I have children.”

I sighed. I had the feeling that this was going to be hopeless. “If you tell us who you are then maybe we can protect you.” I have to admit, I had no idea if that was actually true.

A minute passed.

“I dont gamble my childrens lives on maybe.”

The slowness of communication was infuriating, though at least it was forcing restraint on my part. I was starting to want to scream in block capitals at this man. I knew that I would lose him if I did.

How was I going to persuade him to help?

“I dont know what to call you,” I entered. “Two names come to mind. Hero or Coward.”

I didn’t wait for a reply after clicking enter. I continued, “But a coward would not have spoken to Peter.

“A coward would not care that innocent people might be killed and I think you care.

“I think you want us to stop this man. I think you want to be a hero.

“I think that if the risk was only to you and not your family you would help us.

“If I could promise no risk to them then I would. But I cannot.

“But the world only turns because of the risks that heroes like you take.

“Without people like you we would all of us long ago 232

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be dead. I need you Hero.

“If an attack goes ahead and people die and you could have prevented it…

“If children die and you know you could have saved them…

“Will you be able to tell your own children this? Will you be able to look them in the eye?

“But if you do prevent it then you will know that you are the father they deserve.

“Please Hero. Help me to stop this.”

I sat back and ran my hands through my hair. My best, most passionate plea. Would it rouse the builder to action or would he scoff at my corny, clichéd battle cry?

Two minutes passed. Then another.

Peter: Always you must let people choose, Disco.

Disco Friendly: The people who die in terrorist attacks have no choice, Peter.

Disco Friendly: Why should it be different for those who plan the attacks or collude with them?

Peter: Your argument is a moral one, Disco. But the universe has no ethics.

Peter: Hundreds of stars in our galaxy go supernova every year, perhaps swallowing up in an instant whole civilisations that haven’t yet managed to develop the technology to escape their planet. They have no choice but to die and for everything they ever created to be erased permanently from the continuum.

Peter: Sometimes, the word ‘tragedy’ is wholly insufficient.

Disco Friendly: You’re talking about an abstract thing which might not exist and about which no-one could 233

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possibly do anything even if it did. This is real and here, and there are people who could prevent it.

Peter: You cannot force order, Disco.

Peter: You will only create disorder in the long term.

Peter: But I see we have a visitor.

Jessica: Hello Peter. Hello Disco.

She had flown up from the ground I supposed whilst Peter and I had been talking. She touched down gently on the platform between us.

Peter: Hello Jessica. You have met Disco?

Jessica: I believe I welcomed him on his first visit to the island.

Disco Friendly: You did indeed. Hello again, Jessica.

Peter: What would you like to say to us, my friend?

Jessica: I’m scared, Peter.

Peter: I know.

Jessica: Please guide me. What should I do?

Peter: You know that you must decide that for yourself.

Peter: Speak to Disco. He has made choices that only a friend of ours would make.

She turned to face me.

Jessica: Disco, you are right that I don’t want people to die.

Jessica: And you are right that I want my children to have the parent – the mother – that they deserve.

Jessica: So I will place my trust in you.

Jessica: I will try to be the hero – the heroine – that you 234

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need me to be.

Clever Peter. The he was actually a she, and the she had been hiding in plain sight all along.

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19 Now that she’d committed, Jessica’s co-operation was total.

Jessica: The man who commissioned the device is called Bob37 Soma.

Jessica: I knew him as a friend.

Jessica: But I don’t know how that information is going to be useful to you, Disco.

Jessica: It’s not like he’s going to just tell you stuff if you ask him.

Jessica: I already asked him the purpose to which the device was going to be put – twice – and he would not tell me.

Disco Friendly: I’ll try to get his trust.

Disco Friendly: I’ll arrange to ‘bump into him’ at a sim where he is and take it from there.

Jessica: I don’t really understand.

Jessica: Even if you became his friend – even if you became his lover – does that make it any more likely that he’d reveal plans to you that might get him into trouble?

Jessica: Surely he’d be highly motivated not to reveal that information?

Disco Friendly: That’s for sure a possibility.

Disco Friendly: Though you might be surprised at just how much of his long-term objectives a man will sacrifice 236

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for a short-term pleasure.

Jessica: I think you underestimate him.

Disco Friendly: Perhaps.

Disco Friendly: Tell me, did he get to see any of the device before you completed it?

Jessica: No. Disco Friendly: Not even a picture? He has no idea what it looks like?

Jessica: He will have some idea because he told me about the idea for the eight-faced prim configuration in the first place.

Jessica: But other than that, no.

Disco Friendly: Then what if I pose as a builder and sell him your device as though it’?

Disco Friendly: I mean, get him to commission me to build it, then sell him yours.

Disco Friendly: Is there any way in which it could be modified to send us a copy of anything that gets entered into it?

Jessica: Yes, of course.

Jessica: But if he looks at the script then he’ll spot the code that does that.

Disco Friendly: If he had someone who understood scripting then he wouldn’t have needed you in the first place.

Jessica: What he needed was a *skilled* script-coder who could realise his idea in its entirety.

Jessica: A beginner might still recognise any routine that messages a third party.

Disco Friendly: Not if we made the script no-modify.

Then he wouldn’t be able to see it.

Jessica: One of the conditions of the commission was 237

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that everything was full permissions.

Jessica: He wanted to be able to look at every line of code I wrote.

Disco Friendly: Hmm. Disco Friendly thinks.

Disco Friendly: Okay, so how about this: Disco Friendly: I’m assuming that the device overall is controlled by central code in the root prim – perhaps the black box surrounding it?

Jessica: Correct.

Disco Friendly: But there must be a small amount of code also in each of the eight-faced prims, right?

Jessica: Yes. They each have to communicate with the central unit and be able to set their own state on instruction.

Disco Friendly: So we add the bug to one of those prims. It’ll still be visible, but is he really going to check every single one of them?

Jessica: Well, he might.

Disco Friendly: But it’s an acceptable risk, don’t you think?

Disco Friendly: The worse that can happen is he’ll find the code and question me.

Disco Friendly: So long as I make sure my manner of meeting him in the first place appears coincidental, then why should he suspect you?

Jessica: The worst that can happen is he’ll discover that you’re spying on him and reappraise retrospectively the manner of your meeting.

Jessica: Perhaps under such inspection it will no longer appear so coincidental and he’ll start suspecting me.

Disco Friendly: Then I’ll give him another reason for 238

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my curiosity.

Disco Friendly: If I can establish myself as his lover as well as his commissioned builder, I can claim a girlfriend’s jealous curiosity if he discovers the bug.

Jessica sighs.

Jessica: I don’t know.

Jessica: Perhaps. I suppose.

Jessica: What do you think, Peter?

Peter: Jessica, this is for the two of you to decide.

Peter: It is not my affair.

Disco Friendly: I think we should go with that plan.

Disco Friendly: I’ve done this sort of thing before. I promise you that keeping your name out of this will be my top priority after finding out their plans.

There was a long hesitation. Finally: Jessica: Okay, fine.

Disco Friendly: How long will it take you to alter the code?

Jessica: I’ll start working on it now.

Jessica: Perhaps two to three hours? I’ll want to test it properly.

Disco Friendly: Good.

Disco Friendly: Make sure there’s nothing in the code – no remarks or annotations – that could point back to you.

Jessica: Don’t worry, I intend to check that very thoroughly.

Disco Friendly: In the meantime, I’ll go bump into Bob37 Soma, if he’s on.

Jessica: How will you know where he is?

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Disco Friendly: I have my tools.

“Don’t go maverick on me on this,” Fred had told me, “keep me in the loop on everything.” I didn’t need his involvement right now to help me locate Soma on the grid; two years earlier he’d supplied me with a HUD that could give that information to me for any avatar I wanted to track down. Nonetheless, I knew he’d be furious if he learned that I was going ahead with a seekand-contact at this stage without first updating him. I had no reason not to. When he discovered what I’d done he would know within a minute’s worth of thought that I’d been acting to protect Peter and Jessica, that I was hoping that by supplying him not only with the name of the device commissioner but also his intended activity I would satisfy him to the point where he would see no need to intrude upon their lives. There was not one particle of doubt within me that Fred would be expecting me to dial in my progress and let him decide what the next step was for me – if there was to be a next step for me at all.

In my job for him two years earlier, my task had been to discover the mission objective of the men Fred was already watching. He’d known their names and he’d known where in SL they hung out: what he’d needed from me was to know what it was they were up to; what he’d needed was some sort of proof that would justify some sort of action against them. He’d not been after proof that could be used to evidence a prosecution, however: Fred had needed this proof just to demonstrate to his seniors that SL could be used – was being used – to plan covertly an RL attack. The success of that case in 240

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achieving exactly that objective had changed everything.

He no longer needed proof at anything like the incontrovertible level he’d previously required.

Reasonable grounds for suspicion was now enough for him to get permission to walk up to someone on the street and to remove them to a place of questioning. The agency was convinced. Fred had been promoted. Civil liberty had been further – unofficially – erased.

And yet, what did we really – really – know about the person who had commissioned this device? We knew only that he didn’t want Jessica to know what he intended to use it for. Wasn’t that okay? Wasn’t it fine for someone to desire such things to be private? If he had told her, “Mind your own fucking business” rather than, “I’d really rather not say” then did that choice of language give us any right or even genuine grounds to assume that the intent was malicious and might put human life at risk? Wouldn’t the truly devious terrorist have a benign or polite reply to deflect any possible attention?

That, I decided, would be my play with Fred when it was time to answer questions. Nothing had suggested itself as overtly serious to me so I’d gone on impulse with my instinct and explored further.

He wouldn’t buy it and he would be furious.

He’d tell me that this hadn’t been my call to make.

If would have to do, though. It would have to do.

Let me see, I thought: female attractive builder/scripter…

My alts were organised these days as folders on an obscurely named Google drive. In each folder were jpegs showing that avatar in each of the main outfits she 241

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and/or he had available, plus a notecard containing all profile text. It made it so much easier to keep track of them all this way.

So, there was Georgina Photon, with her short, dark bobbed hair. A dedicated builder according to her profile, she had a couple of high quality outfits, but they had more than a touch of tomboy about them. Also, her makeup was basic.

Getit Now? Hmm. No. Too slutty.

Mire Templeton? This avatar I mostly used as a man, but there were female outfits too – quite a nice black evening dress – plus a full set of attachable female genitalia and a pair of colour-matched Lolas. Ah, Lolas: a whole industry set up around attachable breasts. And now the mesh bodies were sweeping them aside. The progress of SL body fashion was indeed a cruel mistress.

Lisa Lamented. Yes. The builder text in her profile could be beefed up a little, but she had all the right assets: brown hair in various styles, including an updo that went brilliantly with her pure white evening dress; tanned, photorealistic skin over a mesh body – admittedly, it was the mesh body that everyone seemed to be using, but I’d customised the shape to more ‘actual woman’ proportions, which made her not just different but real in an undefinable way. I logged her on. I remembered I even had a set of hickie tattoos which could be placed in various places around her body. I placed a small one at the bottom of her neck where it met her shoulder.

I attached the HUD Fred had given me and entered ‘Bob37 Soma’ after the channel number it listened on.

The name appeared in the display; after a wait of about 242

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twenty seconds, the sim he was in appeared next to it. ‘RedGlove’. I looked it up on the map and saw that there were eleven people there, gathered in a single spot. A club, then. Perfect. I put on the white dress and teleported over.

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20 In fact, it wasn’t a club. The avatars were sitting in a circle in a building nearby my touchdown point and occupying eleven out of sixteen bean bags. The building looked like it had been constructed in 2007; there was not one scrap of mesh to be found in it and the textures were all straight out of the old Harbinger’s Haven box. A sort of factory/warehouse on the outside, the inside was open and empty with the exception of the bean bag circle and a few blocky sofas around the edges. The wooden floorboards were vastly oversized and the pictures on the walls were all glaring on full bright. The building had a sign over the entrance in yellow-on-blue Comic Sans that read, “Banana Peel Poets”.

As soon as I crossed the entrance and came within chat range of the group, a voice crackled out of my right speaker: “…and whistle to my breathless dog, he gallops to me through the fog.

Soaking wet and steaming, his eyes are bright and wide and gleaming.”

The speaker was a woman. Her avatar looked about nineteen, though by her voice I reckoned that could be multiplied by three at least. There was a short pause and 244

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then people started activating their applause gestures and paid a few compliments.

Pauller Gateshed: How lovely.

Trinnn Teeled: Wonderful!

Dan Crater: Applause!

Simon Simples claps!

Bob37 Soma: What a dedication  A new voice started talking to my left, it was elderly and male and golden. “Thank you Keterina. Welcome, Lisa.

Please take a seat. Will the next poet please take the mic.”

I sat in one of the empty bean bags. There was a short pause whilst everyone waited for someone to volunteer, and then ‘Atwan With’ started speaking.

“I’ve got a couple. I’ll read one now and maybe another later. Can anyone hear me? Is my mic working?

Can anyone hear- oh good; thanks Dan. This one’s called, ‘It’s okay”.

“It’s okay, I know I’m ‘not the right guy’ for you.

I know it’s tough on your endless mission to find ‘Mr Right’. So many have failed to meet those standards. It must be so depressing to discover that this person’s ambition isn’t right or that that person doesn’t have the correct political correctness. It must be heart-wrenching to find out that this guy who just wants to love you is past forty and hasn’t lifted above twenty Ks 245

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in over fifteen years.

It’s okay.

You must be so lonely.

I know you haven’t thought about this, but in case it should occur to you to wonder, I will be okay. I’ll be fine.

You have your conveyor belt and I have mine.

The chief difference is, of course, that I don’t have access to the controls.

But really. It’s okay.

Try the next one out right in front of me if you really can’t manage to wait.

Time is short, after all.

Why would you waste it thinking about the thing you’ve crumpled up and thrown away?”

A short wait, and then the applause started again.

Pauller Gateshed: Aww Atwan  Trinnn Teeled: Wonderful!

Dan Crater: Applause!

Simon Simples claps!

Bob37 Soma: I hear you buddy The ding-ding of an IM sounded.

Chuckles Emerald: Some poems are better left in the ‘Do not read aloud in front of people’ pile, don’t you think?

She was sitting next to me. She wore a green dress, 246

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ginger, flexi-prim hair and circular-lensed sunglasses.

Lisa Lamented laughs.

Chuckles Emerald: I’ll admit, my own pile is pretty big; but at least it keeps its own counsel.

Chuckles Emerald: Hi, I’m Chuckles. It’s good to see a new face here  Lisa Lamented: Hi Chuckles!

Chuckles Emerald: Try not to mind Mr PassiveAggressive there. He’s actually a lovely guy when he’s not nursing wounds.

“Thank you Atwan. Will the next poet please take the mic.” The host wore a young avatar in a grey, paintedon suit. The design was so old it made me feel nostalgic for those frontier times of Second Life where clothes were essentially a special sort of make-up you applied.

His name was Banjo.

I settled my sights on Bob37. He was a three year old avatar and wore mesh pants and a blue sweater over a non-mesh body. Walking boots. Spectacles. Short, slightly spiky brown hair. His profile introduced him as a “poet, actor, wanderer, wonderer.” He listed picks for three different spoken word performance venues and four writer friends who had each inspired him in different ways. There was an additional pick titled ‘Sonia’ with a picture of a blonde woman in a bikini and an empty text box beneath it. His first life tab presented a picture of a dog sitting at a table in front of pizza.

Chuckles Emerald: Are you thinking of reading anything?

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Chuckles Emerald: We always love to hear new voices.

Lisa Lamented: Oh, I don’t write.

Lisa Lamented: Not really.

Lisa Lamented: I just like to listen.

Chuckles Emerald: It’s ok to just read a favourite poem, if you prefer.

Chuckles Emerald: It doesn’t have to be something you wrote yourself.

Lisa Lamented smiles.

Lisa Lamented: Perhaps another time.

Chuckles Emerald: Well don’t be nervous.

“Thank you Trinn. Will the next poet please take the mic.”

“May I go next?” The voice came from Bob37. A European accent. Possibly German. His voice was smooth and resonant. “I wrote this a few days ago. It’s called, ‘Things to do whilst seated’.

“Like. Read. Book. Buy. Ask. Listen. Learn. Try. Comment. Rate. Feedback. Sigh.

Attack. Rant. Shatter. Cry. Love. Hate. Bully. Deny.

Think. Wait. Hide. Lie.” Whilst the applause started scrolling, I opened up an IM window.

Lisa Lamented: Wow. So powerful.

Bob37 Soma: Thank you.

I searched for something meaningful to say about it.

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Something. Anything.

Lisa Lamented: Single words. So raw.

Bob37 Soma: Yes. I searched some more.

Lisa Lamented: So minimal, and yet so emotional.

Bob37 Soma: Yes :) Lisa Lamented: Makes me want to interrogate the poet lol.

Bob37 Soma: lol Bob37 Soma: I think that’s a compliment. All poetry should leave the reader/listener wondering.

Lisa Lamented: I guess so.

Lisa Lamented: I’m pretty new to this.

Lisa Lamented: To poetry, that is.

Lisa Lamented: Not to wondering.

Lisa Lamented: Or wandering ;) Bob37 Soma smiles.

Bob37 Soma: I didn’t think I’d seen you here before.

Lisa Lamented nods.

Bob37 Soma: So what brought you here to BPP? Lisa Lamented: It just suddenly seemed like a good idea.

Lisa Lamented: Some days you find yourself feeling gorged and yet somehow empty.

Lisa Lamented: And you can’t work out what it is that you need. Something much more subtle.

Lisa Lamented: Most days like that I turn to tea.

Lisa Lamented: Today I decided I needed poetry.

Bob37 Soma smiles.

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Bob37 Soma: Well I’m delighted that my poem went at least some way towards meeting that need.

Lisa Lamented: It really did.

Which pretty much closed down the conversation. tried one more time.

I

Lisa Lamented: I love your voice, btw.

Bob37 Soma: Oh, thanks :) Lisa Lamented: Great accent.

Lisa Lamented: Very smooth.

Lisa Lamented: Will you be reading anything else?

Bob37 Soma: I’ve already read three times in this event and it finishes in a few minutes, so no.

Lisa Lamented: Aww. Shame.

Lisa Lamented: I don’t suppose you do private readings? LOL Bob37 Soma laughs.

Bob37 Soma: I agreed to meet a friend after this, so not today I’m afraid :) Bob37 Soma: But I go to quite a few poetry open mics.

Bob37 Soma: If you decide you want to hear poetry on a regular basis, you’re likely to see/hear me again.

The double brush-off: turning me down to meet a ‘friend’ and straight away averting any potential friendship request before I had the chance to make it.

Damn, I was good at this.

So much for the rapid seduction, then. I could still, however, follow him. Whilst the session’s closing remarks were made by Banjo, I logged on in parallel another avatar – this one a generic ‘here to have fun and 250

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enjoy what SL has to offer’ male: short hair, striped shirt and a cock when naked of extremely dubious quality – and got him ready to take over the trail just as soon as Bob37 made good his departure. This happened at two minutes past the hour, following a brief thank you to the host. I gave my own thanks and added a personal farewell to Chuckles. I looked up Bob37’s new location as a mainland sim in Satori called Picklebutter. On the map, I saw just two green dots for this region so I picked what I hoped was an inconspicuous spot in a neighbouring sim and sent ‘Gentlemanly Sir’ on his way there. Meanwhile, I parked Lisa in a sandbox at 1000 metres, just in case Bob37 decided she was interesting after all and sent her an IM. I minimised her window and switched to Gentlemanly’s view.

He was standing in open, empty, abandoned land; undulating, slightly yellowing hills that stretched in all directions. In fact, the entire sim was abandoned except for one small 512 metres-squared plot in the north-west corner – and even that was only occupied at 300 metres, making the sim at ground level completely devoid of any detail. I cammed up inside the active plot and found a concrete skybox with no windows. Inside were scattered about four or five pieces of low prim BDSM equipment and on the walls were hung various photographs of women in bondage. Nobody else was on the sim.

Somewhere, a server was running just for that skybox and this empty land to continue to exist. What a waste. I hoped ‘Second Life 2’ would have a chance to get off the ground before this decay had spread through so much of the grid that the first virtual world had become little more than an abandoned theme park.

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Then again, I mused, perhaps one day Peter’s queue might pass through empty regions like this.

Next door in Picklebutter things weren’t all that much better. I counted four properties, all of 1024 metressquared size. Bob37 and his companion were in a skybox at 300 metres, sitting opposite each other on facing sofas.

They were probably talking in IM. They were probably talking about something completely innocuous, since why would someone go to the trouble of creating/commissioning a secure communication device and then talking openly about evil deeds in unencrypted messaging? Just the same, I wanted to have a go at listening in. There was no way I could get within the 20 metre chat range in an almost empty sim without appearing suspicious. Fortunately, the land beneath Bob37 was build-enabled and therefore accessible to a listening prim. I wasn’t anything like close enough to rez something there, but I was close enough to deliver something with a very long stick.

I rezzed a prim and dropped into it a standard listening script. I made the prim invisible and activated transparency mode so that it showed up to me in red.

Now I needed a mega-prim. Good old mega-prims.

Whilst the original ten metre limit on prim dimensions had been eased on the introduction of mesh to a sixtyfour metre limit, there were still times when that collection of monstrously large blocks came in handy. I rezzed a 512 metre length of pine and immediately made it invisible, then linked my listening device to one end of it. I slid the device over to the plot beneath Bob37 and then rotated the whole rig clockwise until the bug was just beneath the floor of the skybox. I unlinked the two 252

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pieces. I deleted the megaprim.

The instant it was in range, the listening script started to report to me.

Object: Bob37 Soma: Yeah, I know what you mean.

Object: Bob37 Soma: So you heard nothing from her?

Object: Greg Hilton: Nothing at all.

Object: Greg Hilton: She’s just disappeared from the grid.

Object: Bob37 Soma: Did you check her groups?

Object: Bob37 Soma: That would tell you when she last logged on.

Object: Greg Hilton: Yeah, I thought of that.

Object: Greg Hilton: We’re both in ‘The Fox and the Grapes’, so I pulled up the membership list on that – says she logged in last eight days ago, exactly when I saw her last.

Object: Bob37 Soma: You emailed her?

Object: Bob37 Soma: You have her email, right?

Object: Greg Hilton: Sure. I must have sent her three or four emails now.

Object: Greg Hilton: No reply. Nothing.

Object: Greg Hilton: I’m telling you, it’s starting to make me sick with worry.

Object: Bob37 Soma: It’s a real life email or an SL name?

Object: Greg Hilton: SL. Object: Greg Hilton: I do know her RL name, though.

Object: Bob37 Soma: You tried Googling it?

Object: Greg Hilton: Well yes… but that was months ago lol Object: Greg Hilton: The problem is her name’s not 253

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very rare.

Object: Greg Hilton: I can narrow it down a bit by the state I know she lives in, but it still leaves a whole load of people.

Object: Bob37 Soma: You’ve got no other bits of information you could use to filter? Like her profession?

Object: Greg Hilton: All I know is she works in an office.

Object: Greg Hilton: She wouldn’t tell me the company.

Object: Greg Hilton: Well, she said ‘maybe one day’…

The disappearing avatar. It almost made me nostalgic for the days when cases like this would regularly enter the office of the Step Stransky Private Detective Agency.

And so I sat and read and waited. Bob37 listened. Bob37 asked clarifying questions. Bob37 offered helpful advice without stamping all over Greg’s clear need to offload and process.

He was, in short, the perfect friend. And so it continued.

It was almost two in the morning when I finally gave up, and that was nearly thirty minutes after Bob37 had logged off; I had a hope that he might come on again, once some time had passed, and get something serious done. I didn’t know why I thought he’d do that. It was just an idea. When I’d been chasing cheating partners in the metaverse, my ideas had usually counted for something. None of them seemed to work in this new world, however. None of them. So much for my grand plan of bugging the data storage device. All of this was getting me absolutely nowhere.

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“Don’t go maverick on me on this,” Fred had told me.

I knew now I was wasting time. I knew I should have brought him in on this. There was no escaping it any longer. I just wasn’t resourced well enough to take this any further by myself.

255

21 But then a new idea came to me during the night. I’d try to convince Jessica to let me log in on her original account – the one she’d used when she agreed to the building comission. Once in, I’d re-establish contact with Bob37 as her and claim I’d been out of SL action due to some illness, but had now completed the storage device (which, when I sent it to him, would be complete with the bug that would leak me its contents). I logged in to put the idea to her. It turned out, in fact, that she was waiting to speak to me.

Jessica: Hi. Disco Friendly: Hey Jessica.

Disco Friendly: I was just about to message you.

Jessica: Did you get anywhere last night?

Disco Friendly: No, I’m afraid not.

Jessica: I knew you wouldn’t.

Disco Friendly: Well, I tried.

There was a pause.

Jessica: So look, I’ve been thinking about this.

Jessica: I think the only way he’s going to accept this modified device is if it comes from me.

Jessica: I think I should log back in on my old account 256

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and just give it to him.

Jessica: I’ll tell him I was in an accident that kept me out of SL. Jessica: I mean, it’s still only a matter of weeks since I saw him last.

Jessica: It’s plausible.

Now that was unexpected.

Disco Friendly: Really? You would do that?

Jessica sighs.

Jessica: I don’t really feel like I have a choice.

Jessica: Now that you know who I am.

Jessica: I just want this to be over. As quickly as possible.

Jessica: Not just for me but for Peter too.

Disco Friendly: Look – if you prefer, I’ll log on in your place.

Disco Friendly: Actually, I was going to suggest that.

Disco Friendly: Give me the name and password for your original account and I’ll log in and pretend to be you.

Disco Friendly: I’ll copy/paste into your window everything that we say in case he refers to something only you would know about.

Disco Friendly: You can advise me in my ear.

Disco Friendly: That way, if he does have any sort of IP tracking tool, it’ll show him my location in the world rather than yours.

Jessica: No. Jessica: You won’t sound right.

Jessica: He’ll know it’s not me.

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Disco Friendly: You might be surprised at how easy it is to fool someone like that.

Jessica: I might, but my way is less complicated.

Disco Friendly: You’re quite sure?

Jessica: Absolutely sure.

Well this was a different Jessica from the terrified person I’d spoken to on the previous day.

Disco Friendly: Ok, so you’ve added the bug to the storage device?

Jessica: Yes. Disco Friendly: Then you need to log on in your original account.

Disco Friendly: Contact Bob37 by IM. Tell him you’ve been indisposed but that the device is finished.

Disco Friendly: Copy everything into an IM window with me so that I’ve got a record of what he says. I’ll help you if I can.

Jessica: Ok. Jessica: Where will you be?

Disco Friendly: Wherever he is. I’ll watch his avatar.

Disco Friendly: Let me log on an alt now and position it. Once I’m ready, I’ll send you an IM. Disco Friendly: Then you’ll need to log on your primary account. I’ll need its name.

Jessica: Ok. It’s Jessica Twelve.

Disco Friendly: Your original account is called Jessica too?

Jessica: Yes. Jessica: I didn’t think he’d look for someone with the same name. If he looked.

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Disco Friendly: Fair enough. Good thinking.

Disco Friendly: Give me five minutes, ok?

Jessica: Ok. I logged off. Who to choose this time from my small army of alternative accounts? It didn’t really matter since I only wanted to observe; no actual interaction was planned. I went with Sarah Sonnet, logging her in to her home spot in a shopping sim not far off the west coast of Corsica. I attached Fred’s HUD and located Bob37 in an island region with twelve other avatars. I hit the teleport button.

I materialised outside a tall, post-modern building of concrete and glass. An art gallery. Ten of the thirteen avatars I’d spotted on the map were dancing in front of its grand entrance, a set of wide steps leading up to doors which stretched all the way up to the roof.

Banners hung either side of the entrance announcing the latest exhibitions. A DJ stood behind a set of rotating record decks. I’d touched down in the middle of an gallery opening.

Bob37 was dancing at the foot of the steps with a brunette avatar who looked like she’d just stepped out from the front cover of an SL fashion magazine: tall, slim, pale-skinned, blush-cheeked; a tight, black dress that looked like it was made out of shiny plastic.

Locksmith Handy: Welcome to the Autumn Exhibition at Felt, Sarah.

Sarah Sonnet: Thanks, Locksmith!

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the entrance for a notecard about our exhibitors.

Locksmith Handy: Feel free to look around. We hope you enjoy your visit!

Sarah Sonnet: I’m sure I will!

I walked up the steps and into the huge foyer, then took a left turn into the first of the exhibition spaces. A number of white plinths displayed single cuboid pine prims with logos carved into one face. On closer inspection, they were internet and online gaming terms made to look like company logos: ‘REZ’ and ‘TP’ and ‘AFK’ and many more. I stood in front of one of them as though I was inspecting it carefully and turned my camera to Bob37.

I opened up an IM box to Jessica.

Sarah Sonnet: Hi Jessica, it’s Disco.

Jessica: Hi. Jessica: So you’re a woman now?

Sarah Sonnet: When I need to be.

Jessica: Is he there?

Sarah Sonnet: Yes, I’m looking at him now.

Sarah Sonnet: He’s dancing.

Jessica: You’re at a club?

Sarah Sonnet: An art gallery. There’s an opening going on.

Jessica: Ah, right.

Jessica: Is he dancing with someone?

Sarah Sonnet: Yes. Jessica: Who? Jessica: I might know her, is all.

Sarah Sonnet: Let me see…

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Sarah Sonnet: She’s called Diamond Solitude.

Jessica: Oh yeah, I met her a couple of times.

Jessica: A model.

Sarah Sonnet: Well she sure looks like one, yes.

Sarah Sonnet: Do you know anything else about her?

Jessica: Not really.

Jessica: What sort of a dance? Romantic?

Sarah Sonnet: Very.

Jessica: Well well. Bob got lucky.

Jessica: Okay, I’ll log off and bring Jessica Twelve on.

Sarah Sonnet: Okay.

Jessica is offline.

The poet. The art appreciator and patron. The perfect friend to talk to. I had to hand it to Bob37: he really did have a well-made mask. Just like Eamon Herriot. As I watched him I realised his lookat was broadcasting when I spotted his camera crosshairs come briefly to rest upon Diamond’s exquisite face. What I wouldn’t give some days for a tool that would allow me to listen in on IMs. His gaze didn’t stay there for long. The pink focal point disappeared after a moment or two, and when I found it again it was focused on a sculpture in the exhibition area on the first floor above me. He wasn’t even checking out the other women. He was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing.

Or he was pretending to be doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing. How was it possible to tell the one thing from the other?

Jessica Twelve: Hi. Sarah Sonnet: Hi there. Are you ready?

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Jessica Twelve: Oh God, he’s IMing me already.

Sarah Sonnet: Just keep calm, Jessica. Don’t forget to copy and paste his text so I can see it.

Jessica Twelve: Ok. Jessica Twelve: He’s still typing.

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: Where the fuck have you been?

At the art gallery, his gaze remained fixed on a sculpture of two pine cubes ‘interfacing’ via a male/female connection. It was called ‘Doggy’.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: Jesus Christ, Bob, is that how you say ‘hello’ to me now?

Jessica Twelve: Bob Soma: We had a deal, Jess.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: I’ve been in hospital, Bob, ok?

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: I nearly died. Thanks for your concern.

His crosshairs moved to the next piece, a similar arrangement, but this time the cubes were aligned one above the other, the male connection descending towards the female hole below. This one was called ‘Missionary’.

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: I think we both know I don’t really give a shit.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: I miss when you were just some sweet guy I knew.

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: Just tell me my device is 262

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finished.

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: I need it yesterday.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: It’s finished.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: I finished it weeks ago and was going to pass it to you, but you weren’t on.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: And then the next day I was in a car accident.

His gaze moved on to ‘Ride’.

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: Did you make it selfgenerating like I asked you to?

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: Yes, of course.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: That’s what you asked for so that’s what I did.

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: Good.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: I don’t suppose you’re of a mind now to tell me what you want to use it for?

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: I don’t suppose I am.

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: Just give me the fucking script.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: Fine. Do you want me to pass it to you in a notecard?

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: Yes. Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: Hurry up, I haven’t got all day.

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: I’m at an event, you know.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: And the rest of my payment?

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: You’ll get it once I’ve verified the device works the way I want it to.

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Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: The agreement was on delivery.

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: The agreement didn’t mention you going missing for several weeks.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: Ok fine.

Jessica Twelve: Jessica Twelve: I’m sorry I let you down.

Jessica Twelve: Second Life: Inventory item offered Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma received your inventory offer.

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: Well you got it to me in the end. That’s the main thing.

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: Thanks.

Jessica Twelve: Bob37 Soma: I’ll be in touch.

The conversation done, absolutely nothing happened at the gallery, except Bob37’s focus moved to the next exhibit along.

Jessica Twelve: How was I, Disco?

Jessica Twelve: I mean Sarah?

Sarah Sonnet: Disco is fine… and you were amazing.

Jessica Twelve: You really think so?

Sarah Sonnet: I couldn’t have done it better myself.

Sarah Sonnet: It was just perfect.

Jessica Twelve: Thank you.

Jessica Twelve: I feel a little dizzy.

Sarah Sonnet: Have some water.

Sarah Sonnet: Trust me – it’ll help.

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likely be a long wait before the device was deployed, but when it did the pieces would all be in place. The knowledge that no plan was yet in action – that everything really had been hinging upon the creation of Jessica’s device – brought about a tremendous surge of relief. The worry that my timewasting might have ended up costing lives had been burning through the lining in my stomach. We had time on our side again, now.

Though that was one thing about all this that didn’t really make much sense: why hadn’t Bob37 simply found himself another builder?

And there was something else odd too; something I couldn’t quite locate; something not quite right; something at the very edge of my vision.

Before I had a chance to reflect any further on this, however, the ding-ding of an incoming IM announced the arrival of a brand new distraction.

265

22 It was Mica Borsec.

Mica Borsec: hello baby Mica Borsec: what a coincidence Of course. Sarah Sonnet was the avatar I’d used on his case, back in August. I’d logged her in without thinking.

I hadn’t spotted him coming on.

Well, it didn’t really matter. I was about to ignore him and close down the window when my curiosity, fuelled by my suddenly good mood, got the better of me. Surely he wasn’t back to his old tricks already? Perhaps I was going to have to use that second set of pictures.

Sarah Sonnet: Mica!

Sarah Sonnet: Long time no see!

Mica Borsec: yes baby Mica Borsec: I saw you Mica Borsec: you saw me Was it possible that he’d put two and two together and worked out that Sarah was the woman who’d knocked on his door with a Taser and a camera? Well, no matter if he had.

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Mica Borsec: you are a beautiful woman baby Mica Borsec: I think about you all the time Mica Borsec: how you stood in front of me Mica Borsec: how you opened your coat Mica Borsec: mmmm Mica Borsec: you must work out Sarah Sonnet: I don’t remember that.

It had to be worth a try.

Mica Borsec: lol Mica Borsec: you forget me baby?

Mica Borsec: you forget me Thursday?

Mica Borsec: I don’t forget you Mica Borsec: I won’t forget you Sarah Sonnet: ‘Thursday’?

Mica Borsec: lol Mica Borsec: come on baby Mica Borsec: I’m not stupid Mica Borsec: it was a good evening, yes?

Mica Borsec: for you Mica Borsec: for me not so good Mica Borsec: my family were very unhappy Sarah Sonnet: Sorry, Mica; I don’t know what you’re talking about. We were together in your skybox and then you disappeared.

Sarah Sonnet: That’s the only thing I remember.

Mica Borsec: lol Mica Borsec: ok baby Mica Borsec: have it your way Mica Borsec: just thought I would say hi Mica Borsec: hope to see you again 267

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Mica Borsec: soon baby Mica Borsec: your fit body Mica Borsec: gasping Mica Borsec: moaning Mica Borsec: sobbing Mica Borsec: soon baby Mica Borsec: soon Mica Borsec is offline.

I looked at the last few lines for a few moments longer, a vague disquiet coming over me. Sobbing?

I picked up the phone and rang Stransky.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. I was just wondering what responses there’ve been on the Mica Borsec case.”

“Mica?” He blew out air. “Nothing specific beyond the usual misogynistic hate messages and death stroke mutilation threats your posts usually inspire. Why?” “He just IMed me in SL. I think he was being threatening.”

“Think?”

“In a creepy… leery… noncommittal… broken English sort of way.” I felt a sudden shiver and went to my bedroom window. What had he meant by, “What a coincidence”? The street looked normal, I supposed. An eighty-something woman was pushing her tartan shopping trolley slowly east on my side of the road, whilst a mother and her pre-school daughter were walking west on the opposite pavement. Further up the street, two men were stopped and talking, but I recognised one of them as the friendly guy who ran the nearby off-license and his body language suggested he 268

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knew the other very well.

“He’s just trying to spook you,” Stransky said. “He’s powerless but he wants you to think that he’s not.”

“You’re probably right.” I sighed. “Would it hurt them every once in a while to show at least a slither of penitence?”

“It’s not our job to reform them.” Stransky never missed a teaching opportunity. “It’s our job to deliver a consequence – and a message to those who might be thinking of duplicating their deeds. Speaking of which, did you hear the news today?”

“No. What’s happened?”

“New laws are on the way, Thursday. Revenge Porn is to be made a crime. The, um, Criminal Justice and Courts Bill. It’ll come into force next year, they’re saying.”

“Really? Wow. That’s great news!”

“I thought you’d be pleased.”

“Well it’s about fucking time, isn’t it?”

“It might mean our work starts to dry up.”

“I’ll be happy to be made redundant. There’s still plenty to be done outside of the UK.” “And speaking of which, I have a meeting with a potential client later today – a guy from Eastern Europe, so you might be needing that passport again soon. He’s come over representing his sister, he says, who’s become agoraphobic since a video made of her by her SL ex was released online along with her email address and mobile phone number.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “They never learn.”

“Well it’s our job to teach them - one at a time, if necessary.”

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“Alright. Is the meeting in London?”

“Yes. I’ll let you know the details tomorrow.”

I suddenly wanted to be away from my flat for a while. “I can come with you if you want,” I offered.

There was the slightest of hesitations. “That’s not what we… normally do.”

I laughed. “You don’t have to hide behind protocol with me. You’re taking Samantha – I get it.” Stransky had been seeing someone now for nearly a year. She and I had not yet met, a situation Stransky did not appear especially keen on modifying.

“Well, not to the meeting, of course,” he said, a little gruffly.

“Are you ever going to tell her what you do for a living?” His official explanation to her was that he was a self-employed digital marketing consultant. He did actually do search engine optimisation for a few clients in his spare time – he had to have a legitimate business front of some description for managing payments – so it wasn’t an especially difficult deception.

He sighed. “That would be extremely difficult.”

“You could just explain me away as a business associate.”

“And that would just be laying down yet another thread in an already very tangled web.”

“Ok. Well, I hope the meeting goes well.”

“Thanks.”

I hung up.

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shuddered and logged out. Prick. So that was another account I was now going to have to retire. Somewhere in cyberspace there was a whole graveyard dedicated to the alts I’d had to kill off over the years: Susan Sonnet, Lyra Lyric, Camper232, Burned Badly, Masculamity; to name but a few. And not forgetting, of course, Definitely Thursday. He I missed most of all. In a way, that account had been my home.

Oh well.

271

23 It got me thinking, though. For the last couple of years I’d effectively lived in SL homelessly via a series of accounts; I no longer had a single identity there. I no longer really had a house - sure, I had a rented skybox in one place that served as a home spot for a few of my alts, plus a patch of Stransky’s – Spence’s – land for building bits and pieces (we still did occasional metaverse-only casework from time to time so there was still a need for listening devices like the one I’d used to spy on Bob37) – but these were just prefabricated, only functional spaces.

I hadn’t bought a single item of furniture in all that time.

I hadn’t spared a single thought for what I wanted my little part of SL to look like. Once upon a time, that sort of thing had mattered to me.

Why, I wondered, should it not matter to me now? I had a place of my own in RL. I had a stable income of sorts. I had an identity that meant I could move around and buy things without being apprehended by the police. In the longer term, it would probably be more sensible to locate to another country than remain in the UK as facial recognition technology became better and more widespread, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t now lay down a few roots in the metaverse. Those roots could come with me. In fact, now that revenge porn was going to become a crime in the UK, what was stopping 272

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me from moving overseas right straight away? Britain was becoming a bitter, resentful country with its growing obsession over immigration, a theatre that was set to take centre stage nationally in the very town I lived in with an upcoming by-election just over a month away. I knew that views probably wouldn’t be a great deal different in any other country on the planet, but at least if I was elsewhere then the newness of it all wouldn’t make everything feel quite so tired and worn-out.

I could create a home and settle down. Maybe I might meet someone. Maybe I might even set up a family.

I decided there and then that I would finally take Fred up on his offer. I’d relocate to the States. Stransky would be pissed a little, but I reckoned he’d understand.

Ultimately, it would help him to move on too. And it wasn’t like I wouldn’t be able to continue to work for him across the pond from time to time.

I sat down and composed Fred a secure email updating him on everything I’d found out. There was no point in holding back on that any longer. It would probably be days, maybe even weeks before Bob37 put his newly acquired data storage device into action. There was just no way that Fred would wait anything like that amount of time without expecting a progress report. But we had a name now and we had a plan in place. I would get bollocked for sure for having done it all by myself, but he would calm down and let me see it through.

I ended the report with, “Fred, I’ve decided that I would like to settle down in a new life after all. Does your offer still stand? Would you be able to sort something out for me? Could we discuss further when it’s convenient for you?”

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A small town, perhaps. Some place on the east coast. I fancied leafy New England. I fancied a dog. Would that be asking for too much? Would the offer extend only as far as an apartment in some downtown district of a large city?

Once I’d sent the message, I lay back on my bed for a few moments and entertained the New England fantasy behind closed eyes. How soon might it be arranged, I wondered? How quickly might I end up going? Might I be there before 2014 was over? Might October be my last month in the UK? I felt warmed by the idea and it took me by the hand and led me to the sleep which had eluded me so thoroughly the previous night.

It was a lovely dream, whilst it lasted.

As it turned out, Fred’s response wasn’t anything like as angry as I’d thought it would be: “We’ll meet soon to discuss. You’ve gone outside the remit of what I asked you to do and I’m going to have to slap your wrist hard for that, but it’s a good lead and we’ll start watching Soma carefully. That doesn’t mean you’re not in trouble.

I’m glad you’ve finally decided to settle down before I get promoted/fired/murdered. We’ll talk about that too.

F.” Actually, it was staggeringly mild. Perhaps I’d caught him on a good day. Perhaps the knowledge that he’d have more control over me in the future had taken the edge off my unscripted behaviour now. I didn’t much care about that any more. In fact, I quite liked the idea of working more regular hours for him. Perhaps I’d get a position in his office after a fashion. Perhaps I’d become an expert in metaverse espionage over time.

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Perhaps, one day, I’d have staff of my own.

I felt like celebrating, so I jumped into my jogging pants and top and went out for a run.

I don’t listen to music any more when I run. It’s a distraction. The key to aches and pains, I’ve discovered, is not to try to out-volume them with alternative stimuli, but to focus my attention on them, to experience them all, to be mindful of everything that’s going on in my body. The first few minutes of any run I spend identifying points on my skin and locating my awareness in them, thinking about the sensations happening right there as my muscles work and the air I’m passing through hits that spot. For that reason, I wear as little as possible. My jogging pants end well above the knee and I usually wear a top that leaves as much of my midriff exposed as possible. Running should be a sensual experience in its own right, not just ‘exercise’.

Then there is the inevitable drift as my thoughts start to wander. When my body tires and starts to struggle I’ll redirect my focus back upon it, but I usually get at least ten minutes of drift time first. During that time, little pieces of thinking come together and connect. Dots join.

Ideas form. It’s not always the case that the ideas are useful, but they are at least always novel. I try not to direct my mind too much during this time. I want it to wander. I want it to find the links I haven’t consciously noticed.

My mind wandered over Bob37 and the device he now had in his possession. I was aching to know what his plans were. I was aching to know what he wanted to do and who he was connected with. I was aching to take 275

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him down. But my drifting mind wouldn’t let me just dwell on and relish that. The end of a thread was flapping around near my face, sometimes tickling the end of my nose, and all my attempts to reach out and catch hold of it failed. There was something in all of this that’d I’d noticed below the level of conscious thought, something I’d seen that was not fitting the picture. And I knew it was important.

I’d ignored those little intuitions before at my peril.

Inch Sideways had given herself away to me whilst pretending to be Hewson Resident by knowing the name of a sim I hadn’t told her; I didn’t notice the slip until it was much too late. And, before meeting him in London and learning that he was Stransky, Spence had practically waved a sign in front of my face that he was not all he seemed when a message he’d left me cryptically suggested ‘Thursday is Definitely a Sideways Step’. Stransky now still found it incredible that I hadn’t attached more importance to that.

This was one of those niggles. I knew that if I ignored it now I’d end up regretting it later.

But you can’t force to the surface buried thoughts like that. They have to come up by themselves. They have to rise when another piece of information unexpectedly summons them. The right fact acts like a magnet, if you find or stumble across it in time. But I could find no suitable magnet. I could find no suitable fact.

I turned left from Ordnance Terrace onto Railway Street and ran up the hill to Chatham Station. I took a break on the pavement opposite and leaned against the brickwork that overlooked the platforms below. I looked down, wondering if I’d see Stransky because the 1:37pm 276

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train to Waterloo East would be leaving in about a minute. Of course, the likelihood was that he’d left at least a couple of hours previously; indeed, he was nowhere to be seen on the part of the platform I could see from my position and I knew he never waited beneath the bridge because he had a thing about bacteria in the accumulated pigeon shit he was convinced had amassed in the girders above.

The loudspeakers below me crackled into life. “May I have your attention please. The train now approaching Platform one is the one thirty-seven service to London Charing Cross, calling at Rochester, Strood, Higham, Gravesend…” It was actually 1:37pm already, I noted. I could just about see one of the platform clocks and I watched it closely to see if the train made it away from the station before it flipped over to 1:38pm. In fact, it had barely come to a halt before that happened. I wondered if an apology would be issued for this appalling lateness.

And then, at that moment, my heart decided to stop beating. That’s how it felt. One second, everything was laid out and orderly with just a single piece missing; the next I had it and everything was scattered across the wind. My magnet was right in front of me.

Surely not? Surely I was wrong? That couldn’t be right.

Could it?

I closed my eyes and saw again the words and knew that I was right. Such a stupid little mistake and yet such a massive error. Well too bad; it had been made and I had noticed. And now I knew exactly what purpose the data storage device was being put to.

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The only question that remained was: Why? There was, of course, one obvious possibility. I logged on as Lisa Lamented when I got back to my flat, not bothering first to shower or change because now I just had to know. I poured over the poetry listings in the events guide and punched the air when I found that there was an open mic starting in just over five minutes at 2pm. I teleported straight over to ‘The Paperweight’, a venue that looked from the outside like a nineteenth century Victorian Board School. I stood just inside the entrance whilst attendees turned up, batting away the various greetings with a polite, “Just here to listen, thanks.” I waited.

The event got started on time and my heart sank when it looked like she wasn’t going to turn up.

I contemplated for a moment using Fred’s HUD to see if she was on and where, and engineering some sort of accidental meeting, but then – just as a new reader was starting her recital, an orange cloud appeared above the landing point, and Chuckles Emerald materialised and touched down.

I gave her a few moments to settle and then I opened up an IM window with her.

Lisa Lamented: Hey there Chuckles!

Chuckles Emerald: Lisa! You decided to give it another try.

Chuckles Emerald: Good for you  Lisa Lamented: Yes :) Lisa Lamented: I still don’t have any poems to read, though.

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Lisa Lamented: But I enjoyed listening last time.

Chuckles Emerald: Well, what would poetry be without an audience?  Lisa Lamented: Apart from anything else, it was just really interesting to hear voices in SL. Chuckles Emerald: Yes. Sometimes I forget how little voice is used in SL outside of performance.

Chuckles Emerald: We’re all familiar with each other’s voices here.

Chuckles Emerald: It gets to feel normal very quickly, I promise.

Lisa Lamented: Perhaps I will give it a go one day.

Chuckles Emerald: You should, and I promise you that you won’t regret it.

Chuckles Emerald: We’ll have you writing paradelles before the year is out!

Chuckles Emerald: (Joking).

Lisa Lamented: What’s a paradelle?

Chuckles Emerald: Trust me – you really don’t want to know.

Chuckles Emerald: Not yet.

Chuckles Emerald: When you’re ready, I’ll tell you ;) Lisa Lamented: lol Lisa Lamented: Last time I was here – well, at the other place – there was a guy who read who I enjoyed.

Lisa Lamented: He had a lovely voice.

Lisa Lamented: I think his name was Bob. Chuckles Emerald: Bob Soma? He’ll be delighted you think so but would rather die than tell you that lol.

Lisa Lamented laughs.

Lisa Lamented: I did tell him and he did brush the compliment off, rather.

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Chuckles Emerald: Yep. That’ll be Bob. Lisa Lamented: I’m disappointed he’s not here today.

Chuckles Emerald: Oh well, he reads quite often, though I think he prefers events that start later.

Lisa Lamented: Do you know, um, if he’s seeing anyone in SL? Chuckles Emerald chuckles some more.

Chuckles Emerald: He’d be even more delighted to know you asked that and even more reluctant to acknowledge his delight.

Lisa Lamented blushes red.

Chuckles Emerald: No need to be embarrassed  Chuckles Emerald: As far as I know, he’s single at the moment.

Chuckles Emerald: In SL, that is.

Lisa Lamented: At the moment?

Chuckles Emerald: Oh, he was in a relationship for quite a while up until a couple of months ago.

Chuckles Emerald: Which all ended, I gather, rather acrimoniously.

Chuckles Emerald: Actually, she was a builder like yourself.

Lisa Lamented: Oh? Perhaps I’ve heard of her.

Chuckles Emerald: Let me see if I can remember.

Chuckles Emerald: Oh yes, of course. Her name was Jessica.

Chuckles Emerald: Jessica Twelve.

280

24 After managing to get hold of Fred on the phone (he wasn’t pleased with me for contacting him like this, as I knew would be the case) and then waiting a couple of hours for him to get back to me with the information I requested, I logged on as Disco and went straight to Peter’s sim. Jessica was not in the region but she was online; I walked across the island in my robe and found a quiet spot on the beach, then sent her a message to come and meet me.

She teleported over almost immediately – her own robe already in place – and sat down next to me.

Jessica: What is it, Disco?

Jessica: I doubt that Bob will have deployed the device just yet.

Jessica: The people he needs to communicate with won’t know that he has it yet.

Disco Friendly: Jessica.

Disco Friendly: That IM conversation you had with him earlier.

Jessica: Yes? Disco Friendly: I know you faked it.

Disco Friendly: Instead of writing ‘Bob37’ you wrote accidentally ‘Bob’. You only did it the once, but once was enough.

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Disco Friendly: Actually, I missed it completely when you wrote it, but I realised later.

Disco Friendly: And I know now that you used to be in a relationship with him.

Disco Friendly: I realise you wanted to punish him, but did you ever stop for a moment to consider what sort of trouble you might get him into? Or yourself?

Disco Friendly: And don’t think about logging out on me, Alexandra. We need to have this conversation.

There was a long pause.

Jessica: You know my real name.

Disco Friendly: Yes. Jessica: Am I going to be arrested?

Disco Friendly: That depends on what you tell me next.

Disco Friendly: But I *can* tell you that the least that’s going to happen is you will probably be monitored for the rest of your life now because of what you’ve done.

Jessica: Oh God. Jessica: I’m so sorry.

Jessica: You have to believe me.

Disco Friendly: Explain it to me.

Jessica: How can I hope to justify it?

Disco Friendly: I didn’t ask you to justify it.

Disco Friendly: Just explain it.

Another long pause. I imagined her at her computer, her heart beating madly. Discovered. Found out. How could she have imagined it would be any other way, eventually? Had she supposed we would just assume 282

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Bob37 was lying when he told us he didn’t know what we were talking about? Had she actually thought it through at all?

Heart beating. Fists clenched. But nothing to do.

Nowhere to run. No lies left to tell.

Jessica: He hurt me bad.

Jessica: We were together for over six months.

Jessica: That’s a lifetime in SL, right?

Jessica: I fell in love with him.

Jessica: He told me he was in love with me.

Jessica: I thought he was the one. THE one.

The words came hesitantly, haltingly. Jessica is typing would appear and then a pause. Then some more typing and then another pause. Sometimes a single sentence took a minute or more to produce.

Jessica: We used to talk for hours.

Jessica: Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of words written.

Jessica: I mean, sex is cheap in SL. Sex is easy.

Jessica: Finding someone who makes hours-long conversations feel like just a couple of minutes – that’s something special.

Jessica: I wanted him.

Jessica: SL was not enough.

Jessica: So I told him I wanted to meet him in real life.

Heart beating. Tears flowing. Fear growing. Now there was a pause of three or four minutes and no indication that she was typing. I wondered if she was pacing the 283

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room in desperation, or in the bathroom throwing up.

Finally: Jessica: Well he ducked and he dodged for a while, saying he wanted that badly but his work meant he couldn’t get away. Blah blah blah blah blah.

Jessica: Eventually, I told him that if he couldn’t come to me then I would come to him.

Jessica: And I would have too.

Jessica: I’d have uprooted us all if it had worked.

Jessica: Except, of course, it didn’t.

Jessica: It didn’t even get the chance.

Jessica: Because that’s when he finally told me he was married in RL. Jessica: Married with three – THREE – children.

I now knew this. I knew their names too, but I suspected that Jessica didn’t.

Jessica: And there you go – just like that, it was over.

Jessica: He wasn’t mine at all.

Jessica: Not even slightly.

Jessica: I cried for hours.

Jessica: And when I was done crying, all I wanted to do was hurt him.

Jessica: If I’d known who he was in RL then I’d have tracked him down, written to his wife, found out who his employer was…

Jessica: But, of course, he’d been very careful not to reveal any of that.

Jessica: He’d made some vague references to being in sales; that was it.

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Jessica: That was all I knew.

Jessica: I started IMing his friends and telling them he was married – and guess what?

Jessica: They already fucking knew.

Jessica: I was powerless, absolutely powerless.

Jessica: I couldn’t even rage at him – he put me on mute.

Jessica: I could have tried approaching him in alts, but what on Earth was the point?

Jessica: He’d have just muted me again as soon as he knew who I was.

Jessica: Honestly, I felt like I was going to explode.

Jessica: In RL, the slightest thing would send me into a rage and then into fits of tears.

Jessica: My kids just didn’t know what was wrong with their mom.

Jessica: I was so hard on them.

Jessica: Oh God. Jessica: What have I done?

Jessica: Will they take me away from them?

Fred had gone silent for a few moments when I’d told him what I’d found out. “I see,” he said eventually. “So you’re telling me this is all a hoax?”

“It looks that way,” I replied.

“Fucking fantastic. Fucking fantastic.”

“It’s a result, though… right?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he barked. “It’s a fucking result when the investment of our resources pays off in something that’s actually fucking useful to us. I don’t pay you to chase down prank fucking 911 calls.”

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said that right at the start.”

“Everything has a potential alternate fucking explanation, Thursday. Jesus Jesus Christ.” I heard the distinctive sound of something being punched. This was his bad and he knew it. And he’d gone and got the Director interested. The climbers below him would soon be reaching for his ankles.

He sighed. “Is there any possibility, do you think, that this woman is actually involved in something and trying to divert suspicion away from her through this story?”

“We don’t know for sure that it is actually a woman,” I replied. “I need you to find out that and some other basics for me. And I suppose what you’re saying is possible, but I don’t believe it. If that was the case, why would she – or he – have sent you that picture in the first place?”

“She still built the device,” he stated. “We don’t lose sight of that.”

“Agreed.”

“Fucking hell. I was certain this was something.

Certain. Find out why she built it. Then we’ll decide what to do.”

Disco Friendly: Why did you build the data storage device?

Jessica: It was just an idea.

Jessica: I was building in a public sandbox.

Jessica: I think it was nine or ten months ago.

Jessica: A guy nearby was constructing a giant hard disk.

Jessica: I mean, like a PC hard disk.

Jessica: He was a science teacher.

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Jessica: He said he wanted to use the model to teach his students how a hard disk worked.

Jessica: The disks span and the heads moved in and out.

Jessica: Of course, it didn’t actually do anything.

Jessica: I mean, it couldn’t actually store any data.

Jessica: Though he was considering the idea of a terminal where students typed in a letter and then saw that letter being converted into binary and stored.

Jessica: He wasn’t sure how to show that process visually.

Jessica: Even on a model at that scale you wouldn’t actually *see* the magnetisation of the particles.

Jessica: He was contemplating a dot for a one and no dot for a zero, but he disliked the idea because that’s more or less how it works for CDs and he didn’t want to confuse them.

Jessica: So I suggested color as a way of representing the magnetisation of particles.

Jessica: And then I got to thinking how color might be used more efficiently to store information in SL. Jessica: The idea grew in my head over the next few weeks.

Jessica: Finally, I just had to build it.

Jessica: For no other reason than I wanted to do it.

Jessica: Sure, I realised after a fashion that this was a secure way of storing information that couldn’t easily be snooped on.

Jessica: As any quasi-mechanical method in SL could be.

Jessica: But that wasn’t the reason I built it: I built it because I could.

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Jessica: I built it because it fascinated me.

Jessica: Sometimes, I become lost in myself when I build and script.

Jessica: I can’t explain it.

Jessica: It’s not just about losing sense of time.

Jessica: It’s about losing sense of self.

Jessica: It’s like I don’t really exist as a person when I’m engrossed in building.

Jessica: There is only the project and my head is an extension of the project.

Jessica: All my insecurities disappear.

Jessica: I feel no emotion. Nothing.

Jessica: Yet I feel complete.

Jessica: Well anyway.

Jessica: The project occupied me for several weeks, on and off.

Jessica: I got it working, but there were a few routines that needed tidying up.

Jessica: And then I met Bob. Jessica: When I fell in love with him, the whole building thing seemed suddenly so silly and inconsequential an activity.

Jessica: Our relationship was all about talking and going places together and about writing poetry.

Jessica: And, well, sex.

Jessica: So when we ended and when I realised how powerless I was to hurt him, I went back to building.

Jessica: If only to try to lose myself again.

Jessica: I just wanted to put my feelings on mute.

Jessica: They were overwhelming me.

Jessica: I had a number of projects I’d wanted previously to start, but the data device was a loose end 288

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that Bob had created, so finishing it became symbolic for me.

Jessica: Since I couldn’t get any form of closure with him directly, finishing that project would be my way of ending that chapter.

Jessica: But then, as I worked on it, I got to thinking.

Jessica: I didn’t know who he was, I couldn’t talk to him, I couldn’t talk to anyone he knew in RL; there was no way I could deliver an RL punishment to him… or was there?

Jessica: If I could convince someone like the CIA that *he* had created this device and with malicious intent, wouldn’t that be something they’d have to take seriously?

Jessica: Wouldn’t they bring him in for questioning?

Jessica: Wouldn’t they question his wife and kids?

Jessica: Wouldn’t they make his life a misery?

Jessica: And I decided that that was what I wanted to do.

Jessica: I’d send a picture.

Jessica: I’d pretend to be scared for my life.

Jessica: And then, when they – you – ‘found’ me, I’d send them after that bastard.

She stopped writing again and there was another long pause of a couple of minutes. Then I saw her start and stop and start and stop, over and over for at least another couple of minutes. Finally, she settled for just a single word: Jessica sighs.

Jessica: I know.

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Jessica: Pathetic.

Jessica: Utterly pathetic.

Jessica: And, to make matters worse, I’ve put Peter at risk through all of this.

Jessica: If only I hadn’t sent that picture.

Jessica: I acted my way through that whole initial conversation with Peter about the device where he recommended I contact you.

Jessica: He knows nothing about this – only what you thought you knew.

Jessica: If I hadn’t sent the picture when I did – if I’d spent just a few more days getting to know Peter and his vision, as I’ve come to know them now – I would have confessed to him my deception.

Jessica: But, once I sent the picture, I crossed the point of no return.

Jessica: What could I do except see it all through?

So there it was: after all these years I was still a Second Life detective, still involved in the errant affairs of humans in the metaverse. No criminal activity; no terrorist threat: just people finding new ways to avenge themselves. After we’d wound up the conversation I sat Disco down in another secluded spot on the sim and prepared my report for Fred, copying over the complete IM and adding my own thoughts. It wouldn’t end there, but neither would it go a great deal further. My own involvement, for now, was over.

I walked back out to the main beach before leaving the Peter’s island for the last time. The queue stretched into a second sim and was now nearly eighty people long.

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25 About twenty hours later, a raid was carried out on the apartment of Bob37 Soma – aka Hannes Schröder – by the German counter-intelligence agency Militärischer Abschirmdienst. Amongst the things recovered from his hard disk were various bomb designs and a list of possible targets, including a number of international airports in Europe considered vulnerable because of the lack of physical obstruction between car pick-up points and the exit doors from Arrivals areas. The plan, it later emerged, was to drive a car through those doors during a busy period and then detonate a bomb concealed in the boot. It was a similar scheme to the 2007 Glasgow Airport attack, where bollards had ultimately prevented the vehicle from actually making it into the building.

Fred rang me a few hours after the raid to tell me about the outcome. “Well, you were right.” He gave me the details of what they’d found. He sounded incredibly relieved.

“And Jessica?”

“We picked her up last night, before she had a chance to sleep.” Jessica was an American. “Once we’d reassured her that her children were and would remain safe, she told us everything. I think she was glad to. She wants witness relocation. I’m not sure that Schröder had anything like the eyes on her in real life that she seems to 291

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think he had, but we might look into it.”

“He was threatening her, then?”

“Yes. It was partly her own doing. When they were together as a couple, she told him more or less everything about her real life. The final details, such as her postal address and telephone number, only required some very elementary internet detective work. That’s why he chose to use her to build the device: as well as her having the requisite skills, he knew he had leverage over her if he needed it.”

“He realised he was being watched, then.”

“I’m afraid,” Fred told me, “that it was your own actions which gave that away, Thursday. At least, I’m assuming it was you. Did you use a transparent listening device on him?”

“I did.”

“Then you should be aware that you’re not the only one who knows how to activate transparency mode to spot such devices.”

That made me wince. “Ah. Right. Shit.”

“He suspected her straight away and phoned her up.

He’d never let on before that he had her number and it confirmed all her worst fears in a single moment. She’s convinced he has someone watching her.”

“If she’d just told me they’d been together in the first place I wouldn’t have put two and two together to make five.”

“Well you know how people are. Some things you just can’t bring yourself to say out loud. Before it all turned nasty, he wasn’t just any old lover. Schröder introduced her to BDSM. It was something she’d previously considered sick and perverted – her words – 292

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and she only went along with it in the first instance because she was infatuated with him and would have done anything he asked her to. You can probably work out what happened next.”

I nodded. “She loved it.”

“She did indeed. And she was – still is – ashamed of herself for loving it.”

“Submissive, I take it?”

“Correct. She thought all that might come out if she told you about the relationship.”

Of course. Of course. It all fit together.

The idea had come to me the previous night. I’d logged out of SL feeling warmed by the glow of good performance. I’d had a couple of drinks to celebrate. I’d rued a little the non-availability of Stransky to satisfy the itch I always get when I feel righteous and successful (it made it somehow both better and worse to know he was probably right at that moment satisfying his own itch with Samantha). I think I need to fuck when I’m in that state because taking my mind to oblivion will prevent it – at least, temporarily – from drifting back to the fact that I once upon a time murdered a man called John-Paul Barnaby, which is a reality-check that never fails to take the edge off any sense of achievement.

In the end, I’d gone to bed with a toy and found release through vibrating plastic. It wasn’t a top ten orgasm, but it left me out of breath and ready for sleep.

A good enough end to the day. I’d turned out my bedside light.

But my mind hadn’t quite been wiped completely. I thought to myself as I lay there how fortunate it was that 293

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I’d spotted Jessica’s typo, and then I wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t.

Fred would have spotted it, I thought.

Of course he would, I realised. It was inevitable. I’d packaged up what I knew and sent it off to him, complete with IM logs. There was no way his analysis would have missed the error.

In which case, I realised, there was nothing really at all fortunate about my moment of revelation at Chatham Station: it would have been discovered in the end.

It was so simple and yet so complete a mistake. The omission of just two digits had unravelled everything.

Why had Jessica, after all the care she’d taken over her elaborate deception, run the risk of typing out his name every single time in her faked IM rather than just copying and pasting it? That simple precaution would have eliminated the risk completely.

Perhaps, I mused, it hadn’t been a mistake at all.

Perhaps there was a part of her that had wanted to get caught.

After all, it was clear that she was in growing conflict over the actions she’d taken. Perhaps getting caught was an easier thing than volunteering a confession.

It was so easy to get distracted by the things people said, to get sucked into the false realities created by their words. From this distance of a single step back from it all, it now seemed suddenly obvious that that apparently stupid mistake had actually been a deliberate one. She had met Peter. She had started to question everything.

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discreetly sabotaged her own deception.

I wondered why she hadn’t owned up to doing that once the truth was out. What purpose did it continue to serve that I and others thought she had made an unintentional mistake?

What if it was important to her that we believed that she had?

At that point, I sat up. I turned my light back on.

Suddenly, there was an imperfection. Suddenly, there was something that didn’t quite fit. The difference between caring and not caring about her mistake being thought of as deliberate was the difference between a scenario engineered with a specific, ongoing purpose and a scenario that was just a temporary means to an end. Suddenly, this felt like an engineered scenario. But why? What was its objective?

The same as all such engineered scenarios, I thought: to distract from a more inconvenient truth.

But what could possibly be more inconvenient than the shit she’d now landed herself in? What was there that was worse?

I tried to think about it from the opposite viewpoint.

What was there that was good about the situation as it stood now?

It was over. It was finished. That was what was good about it. We weren’t looking any more.

But that could mean that…

I jumped out of bed and snatched up my phone.

I asked Fred, “Whose idea was it to pretend it was all a petty revenge plot?”

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her. She begged him to believe that she’d make it right and carry the blame. She cooked up the revenge story and he agreed to it.”

I sighed. “All those hesitations and edits during her confession yesterday: I thought she was overcome with emotion, but really she was just making certain she got the detail right. I totally bought it. It just made everything fit. There was nothing about him at all that said, ‘terrorist’.”

“The most effective terrorists are amongst the most law-abiding citizens – right up to the moment where they press that little red button. Don’t beat yourself up, Thursday. We’re peddled convenient lies every day that encourage us to arrange our facts in a certain way. Noone ever said it’s easy to see through them. You worked it out in the end.”

“The more I do this,” I told him, “the more I don’t know what to believe any more.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s the price.”

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26 About an hour or so later, my mobile rang.

“It’s me.” Stransky sounded hoarse.

“Oh hi,” I said. “How did the meeting go yesterday?”

“Listen,” he said, “I want you to do something for me.”

“Sure,” I replied, feeling slightly unsettled by an unusual intonation in his voice. “What’s up?”

“The extra set of pictures you took of Mica – the unpublished ones: I want you to destroy them. Erase them completely.”

I frowned. “What?”

“Just do it, Thursday. We shouldn’t have messed with him.”

I frowned even more. “I don’t understand.”

“Just fucking do it!” He barked. “Do it right now and film the screen whilst you do it. Then ring me back.”

“Can I at least ask why?”

He took a breath and tried to sound calm. “Look, Thursday, it’s a sideways step, but you have to trust me.

Just do it.”

There was a rustling and then the line went dead.

Thursday, it’s a sideways step…

He’d used the code. Why had he used the code?

Step Stransky: We should have a code.

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Inch Sideways: A code?

Step Stransky: A code.

Definitely Thursday: What sort of a code?

Step Stransky: An identifier code. Something we can use to identify ourselves by.

The code had been created way back in 2007; the three of us had been up one night drinking wine and conjuring up irrelevancies between us. Since then, I had used it to identify myself to the original Step before I killed him, Inch Sideways had used to it reveal herself to me before she reported me to the police and Spence had used it to reveal himself to me as Stransky mark 2.

Definitely Thursday: We should make a phrase out of our names.

Step Stransky: How about this: ‘Thursday is a sideways step’.

Inch Sideways: Oh I like it.

Definitely Thursday: Not bad.

Definitely Thursday: But. Definitely Thursday: We also need an ‘under duress’ variant.

Definitely Thursday: A code we give to villains who torture us for the code…

Definitely Thursday: …so that they can pass themselves off as one of us…

Definitely Thursday: …only when they use it we know they’re really an imposter.

Definitely Thursday: Naturally, we play along in order to skilfully entrap them.

Step Stransky nods in agreement.

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Step Stransky: Good thinking.

Inch Sideways: Oh, it’s so thrilling to see professional minds at work.

Definitely Thursday: I propose ‘Thursday is *Definitely* a Sideways Step’ as the authentic code.

Definitely Thursday: And ‘Thursday is a Sideways Step’ as the under duress code.

I’d forgotten all about the ‘under duress’ bit.

Until now.

I spent a moment dithering. Then I committed. I grabbed my Taser, threw on my sweatshirt and left my apartment in a run.

I don’t own a car. Perhaps I should have called a taxi, but I knew I could make it to his place in ten minutes if I ran flat out and it would have taken a taxi that long at least to get to me.

The night air was cool, but in just a couple of minutes I was overheating. The sweatshirt was thick and heavy and I was running much faster than usual. I tried to think about what I was going to do, but at this speed it was hard to concentrate on anything complex. Before I was even halfway there, a single, simple thought had become lodged in my thinking: You should have called the police.

I should have called the police, but what would I have told them? And wouldn’t the time I would have spent on the phone plus the time it would have taken them to respond easily have exceeded ten minutes? That’s what I tell myself now, but in the moment the only reason I could come up with for not calling them was that I 299

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wanted to protect myself from them recognising me.

Stupid, selfish bitch: you should have called the police.

It took me slightly less than ten minutes to get there.

As I rounded the corner into his street a car with two men in it tore past me. Though I only saw has face for an instant, I recognised Mica Borsec immediately.

The door to Stransky’s flat was open.

He was slumped in his armchair with a hole torn through his head. His blood and brains were still sliding down the wallpaper behind him.

Coldness overcame my entire body. My legs gave way beneath me.

Mica Borsec: gasping Mica Borsec: moaning Mica Borsec: sobbing On my knees, I reached out to the armrest of the sofa for support and pulled myself back to my feet, fighting dizziness and the urge to vomit.

Stransky was dead.

This time, I wept for him.

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Thursday will return… or will she?

What’s that, dear reader? You’d like more?

Ok. I think I could manage that. I reckon I have at least one more AFK novel in me. There are even a few clues I planted in this book to a storyline that could be picked up in another entry to the series. Did you spot them?

If you really want it, though, you’ll have to do your part this time.

Here’s the deal: I’ll write a fifth AFK novel when – and only when – I get a hundred ratings for this one at www.amazon.com.

How do you leave a rating? You’re going to have to have an Amazon account, I’m afraid, but that’s the only real obstacle. Log in, go to the page for this book and leave a rating. You’ll have to leave a sentence or two review as well because the system won’t let you leave a rating without some text. But that’s no big deal, right?

It’ll take you less than five minutes for a book that cost you just over a dollar. I don’t need your review to be poetry; I just need more reviews. All independent authors need reviews because we don’t have big promotional budgets like the large publishing companies do. Reader reviews and ratings are all we have, and they make a difference. Do you like independent publication?

Do you want this to be a world in which the writing you 301

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buy isn’t only that which big companies deem suitable for you to read? You do? Then please leave reviews.

100 reviews and I’ll write another AFK novel. Do you think we’ll make it?

It’ll be exciting if we do.

HH Feb 2015

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