Dead Reckoning and Other Stories

by David M. Kelly

  "Everything is illusion here; you know that don't you?" Granger sipped his own drink and gestured expansively. "You, me, this room, the building... All a fake created by our volumetric imaging systems."

  "How did you know it was me?" Hector asked, not touching the Whiskey that had reappeared.

  "Do you see how clever it all is? It's so convincing that even people of obvious intelligence like you can't begin to understand it. You just had the illusion of feminine appearance. Identity in Elyzium isn't based on your projected Hoxels. If you came in here looking like a donkey, I'd still know it was you."

  Hector grimaced at the word "donkey."

  "Have you ever wondered why you can understand everyone? Every voice you hear is translated into whatever your brain pattern finds acceptable. It's like a computer game, except the players are all dead."

  Granger laughed at Hector's puzzled expression. "I'm hooked up to all of Elyzium's servers; do you think for one second that there's something I'm not aware of if I want to be?"

  "What you did in the game—that was so bad. Those people paid so much money for the environment, the WarBots." Granger waved his glass carelessly. "You know that they shot each other? Four hundred KiloDucks in damaged Hoxels there alone. Those rich people, like you used to be, eager to pay so much for a chance to slice you up. Now they're out of pocket and you're here."

  "I won't cry for them," Hector said. "They wouldn't if the situation was reversed."

  "Yes, what was it you used to say? 'Sentiment has no place in business.' Unfortunately you've become rather costly in a number of ways. Everything comes down to cost versus benefit—I'm sure you'd agree."

  "My wife and lawyer-"

  "Implemented a post-mortem financial adjustment on your Select agreement in line with the terms defined in Section 177, Sub-section 5, Paragraph 3."

  Hector frowned. "I don't remember..."

  "In so far that LifePlus shall attempt to comply with the wishes of the deceased, the company shall at no time be accountable for changes made through legal means employed by surviving relatives, creditors or government agencies in alignment with U.N. charter 170435: The Rights and Obligations to, and of, Virtual Personalities not maintaining a functional biological shell."

  "It's quite a tragedy. Many of our clients Ascend only to find that their preservation isn't quite as important to their beloved survivors as it is to them. It's all legal and in good faith of course, the dead have no rights."

  "That's not true. I remember some of that Charter." Hector didn't think it was worth mentioning that he only remembered it because he'd ridiculed it. "As part of your license you have to provide basic humane levels of interaction and activities for the personalities in your care. You can't just exploit us."

  "You're familiar with the Judgment center..."

  "Reinstate my original agreement and watch my 'cost' plummet," Hector blurted.

  "What would I tell the shareholders? That I handed out thousands of Ducks on a whim? That I traded it to stop a minor annoyance?"

  "The Ducks don't cost you anything. As you said 'it's all an illusion'"

  "But even illusions need maintenance. If I gave you what you want then you'd no longer be a revenue stream. Didn't you once say that if you're not the one paying, you're the one getting sold?" Granger reached over and activated a single display. "There's this too."

  Inge's narrow features appeared. "I have a restraining order." He smiled humorlessly. "Duly issued under Article 17, sub para 5, against the Entity known as Hector Tren-Hump, maintained on the Elyzium servers by LifePlus Inc. Effective immediately, said Entity must make no contact with any member of the living Tren-Hump family, employees of Tren-Hump Associates Inc. or the corporation's legal counsel, Travis-Inge-Badouil. Failure to comply will result in a motion to move said Entity to dormancy and possible complete termination for Digital Harassment. In addition, if the requested action is not taken, we shall be enacting compensation claims against LifePlus Inc, Life Counseling Services, Better Dead than Dead inc., Virtual Intelligence Systems and all other associated business entities."

  "So you see Hector," Granger peered down his long nose, "You're far too expensive to ask for special treatment."

  "There's no basis for accusing me of harassment. I'm legally entitled to make communications as I please."

  "You are. But I can do this."

  Hector saw Granger touch the display and his world turned gray. It was a strange shade that he struggled to recognize: bright, but not stimulating enough to be called "light." In fact he wasn't even sure it was gray; sometimes it seemed almost green, other times nearly black as his awareness changed.

  As his eyes struggled to take in his new surroundings, he saw the swirling patterns that were usually the result of rubbing your eyes. It was maddening; something would appear to loom up in the corner of his vision but would melt away at any attempt to focus on it.

  Worse, ants or spiders seemed to be crawling all over Hector's skin. When he tried to look at his arms and legs he realized he couldn't see himself. Was he blind? There was no sensation, not even the internal sense telling him the position of his limbs, or even if they existed. Just ants crawling over him, each tiny footfall bringing an electric shock of nerve stimulation in never ending waves of nausea.

  Not just on his skin, underneath it too. They were inside him. Swarming inside him. Crawling inside his nose and ears. Scurrying inside his mouth and down his throat making him retch. Not ants, indescribable things that stung and bit and hopped and crawled. Slipping through the pores of his skin. Worming down hair follicles that somehow reached to his very core.

  Hector tried to scratch everywhere, but had nothing to scratch with. The things crawled behind his eyes, into his brain and he screamed noiselessly.

  ***

  Something slammed in to the back of Hector's head repeatedly as a painful white light burned through his tightly clenched eyelids. Squirming away from the light, he realized it was the floor hitting him as he jerked in trembling spasms like a dying fish.

  ———————————————————————————-

  Tren-Hump, Hector. TH15D3AD-1485-13A6-5661A946B3101857

  Cycles: 265 CPU Credit: 1% Ducks: 0.0

  *MAIL*

  ———————————————————————————-

  Teeth grinding at his lack of Ducks, Hector activated the message.

  "The Human Neural Network is such a fascinating thing, don't you think?" Granger's smooth voice sounded inside Hector's head. "LifePlus' technicians have done so much research on it and even they can't explain everything. It thrives on constant input stimuli, to such an extent that it starts to manufacture its own when deprived of them."

  "Even the slightest variation of nothing becomes magnified and distorted, degenerating into a positive feedback loop that brings delusions and delirium. The result is an interesting descent into madness in a short period of time."

  "I know you won't want to repeat the experience. The good news is, you don't have to. It's a choice you make."

  The message cut off abruptly and Hector heard a familiar bellow in the distance.

  "Prepare for Judgment. Prepare for Judgment. Come on Noobs. Move your lazy carcasses!"

  Hector heard the snap of the whip and dragged himself to join the doleful line-up. No-one was cheering him now. All too soon he was back at a gray desk, swiping the controls to process the inane scenes that appeared.

  The day seemed even longer than ever and Hector wondered about that. He'd dismissed it as the familiar illusion brought on by tedium, but was it that simple? LifePlus controlled everything; that much was certain. His perception of time didn't match with the reactions from his family.

  If the company was manipulating mortizens' sense of time there must be a reason, but then Hector's speculations fell apart. What would be the point? He slapped a few invisible controls and directed the character on screen to choose the red ball and go left
. "This is just stupid. What point is there to any of this?"

  "Ain't that the truth? Like I said, that's why they call it work, bud."

  "Fairy godmother?" Hector remembered the voice.

  "Do you have any idea how much trouble you've caused?" The words hissed from an adjacent cubicle. "I doubt it. People like you don't care who they trample on. Every Mortizen who had contact with you or supported you has been given the third degree and had their Ducks confiscated. I can't have a virtual dump now without someone recording it."

  "But why?"

  "You threatened their business. Why else?" The voice paused. "You of all people should know that, Mister high-and-necking-mighty Tren-Hump. I thought maybe what happened might change you. People started to believe in you. I even put a necking bet on you myself. Five whole ducks. But all the while you we're just thinking about yourself."

  "You know who I am?"

  "I couldn't forget that voice after what you did. I was there. One of the miserable thousands you destroyed."

  "You? But how..."

  "I can understand your surprise. After I lost my job, I lost everything. First my friends left, then my wife and even my kids. I hit rock bottom, all thanks to you."

  "You must have gotten back on your feet though, to get here I mean. Every cloud and so on."

  The laugh was short and bitter. "That lottery ticket just blew me away. Who could have guessed? One piece of good luck in my life and what do I win? Millions of bucks? A Hollywood lifestyle? A mansion? Nope. I go and win free Ascendance."

  Hector felt simultaneously embarrassed and resentful. "Why did you help me?"

  "Oh I thought about doing something nasty to you. It used to keep me going through the day as I did these stupid games. But when you showed up, I didn't need to do anything. The worst thing you can do to someone used to privilege is take it away from them and they already had. Now you're just one of the chumps."

  "I can do it again," Hector snapped.

  "You hear that a lot around here." The faceless voice chuckled. "But every day the Marshals bring 'em in by the thousand."

  "Thousand?" Hector stopped operating the controls.

  "Over twenty thousand last I heard. And ninety percent of them are schmucks doing this."

  Hector heard the slap of a hand on a desk float over the partition. If only a few percent were privileged, what were the rest doing? The answer was all too obvious—Judgment. But why?

  It had to be more than just occupational therapy for the masses. Dead or alive, business didn't change and for LifePlus to invest so much into this they had to be making a profit from it, but how? One thing was clear: the majority of people didn't Ascend to a life, or death, of luxury. Granger's words jangled—who was being sold here? "What did you do before you were dead?"

  The fairy godmother hesitated before answering. "I managed process control systems. Until bastards like you decided computers didn't need anyone watching over 'em."

  That didn't help Hector. A computer was just a computer. Except... "What are computers bad at?"

  "Are you kidding me?" The voice went quiet briefly. "Computers ain't smart. They never have been. Despite throwing massive amounts of SeePeeYoo and programming at them for decades—they're still just as dumb as always. Even the most advanced one don't got any smarts."

  Hector thumped the control surface. That was it! Hector had invested in enough tech companies to know that they'd never managed to build a real artificial intelligence. It had always seemed obvious to him and he couldn't understand how the engineers couldn't see it—how could something with no experience of what it was to be human possibly ever think like one? LifePlus was selling the one thing computers couldn't provide, but something the Mortizens could: Judgment.

  The Judgments were coded problems; real world scenarios wrapped up into individual packets of information with thousands of human intelligences ignorantly working out the answers; a giant multi-core human brain. "We have to hit them where it hurts," Hector whispered.

  "Bah... what can we do?"

  "I know how they operate. How the whole system works. I've years of experience—even they can't take that away and I can use it against them just as easily." Hector hammered his fist against the work surface. A word bounced around inside his head until he felt dizzy. It was crazy—an alien concept that only now made sense. "Spread the word. Everyone knows I can beat them. This time we'll beat them."

  "What word?"

  "Strike!"

  The End

  Dead Reckoning came out of nowhere really. I've read lots of stories about mind transfer and digital personalities and started to think about how that might work and who would have access to such technology if it became available. Surely the rich would be the primary beneficiaries; they'd be the people who could afford it and the ones most likely to believe they were worth preserving.

  Throw in my fascination with computer games and "digital communities" and "Hector" was born. His name was chosen because that was what I intended to do to him throughout the story - put him through hell. It was almost irresistible making his situation worse and worse and ever more embarrassing. He's such a miserable, selfish old bastard that he deserves everything he gets, but strangely I found myself growing quite fond of him.

  I had a lot more ideas that I could have included, but the story was already pretty long for a "short." I think it's safe to say that Hector will return at some point.

  How Much Is That Doggy?

  "Dad, you know it's for the best, don't you?"

  Earl Duarte didn't know any such thing. His daughter had raised the suggestion of him going to live at the hideous-sounding "Sunset Dayz" more times than he wanted to remember over the last few years but he had no intention of giving in. He could just tell her that it was pointless now, but then he'd have to explain why and that would only cause more upset and anguish.

  "We've discussed this Ellen. I'm used to having my freedom," His once-pleasant baritone voice had a soft rasp that he tried not to let sound like a growl. "I wouldn't be happy there."

  "How do you know that? You haven't even looked at the brochures. They can take care of you, make sure you take your medications, and there'd be people to talk to. Not to mention how much easier it would be on me and the family. And how long is it since Steve visited?"

  It always came down to the same emotional pressure: Do as you're told, Dad. Give us a break, Dad. It's funny When your kids are young, they depend on you, Earl thought; when they grow up you're re-cast as a feeble, half-witted encumbrance. As for Steve? Earl knew his son didn't come around anymore after a run-in with some of the local guys, but he wasn't going to share that fact with his daughter.

  Ellen didn't let up: "You know you struggle here on your own. I have to fetch your groceries; the nearest store is over a mile away. I have nightmares about you having a fall. And I can't be around all the time. We have lives too."

  "I get by. I always have." Earl smiled, rubbing ineffectually at the brown spots on the back of his hands. "I haven't needed anyone to look after me in a whole heap of years."

  "And what if something happens? This isn't a good neighborhood anymore. Most of the people who lived here when we were kids are gone and the people who've moved in..." Ellen pulled a face. "They look more like squatters than home owners. And what about your kidneys? If I can't drive you, you have to struggle half-way across town to the clinic. The temperatures are dropping now fall is setting in; you might catch a chill or something."

  He had to admit that was true. When he'd started feeling weak, Earl had reluctantly agreed to visit the clinic, knowing full well it wouldn't be good news. There were growths on his kidneys, requiring another addition to the never-ending series of pills and potions he'd gradually acquired as part of his daily diet.

  Dr. Makram had gone overboard of course; stubborn patients like Earl didn't come in every day, so they'd taken the opportunity to run a whole series of tests. Luckily, Ellen hadn't been party to it all and he'd "forgotten" to me
ntion the problems they'd found with his eyesight and signs of degenerative Alzheimer's. Why worry her and the grandkids? It wasn't as if they could do anything anyway.

  Except perhaps, put him in a home.

  "Look, Ellen. I've taken care of myself since I was fourteen and your grandparents passed away. I managed to live through the war. I survived the Uranium mines. I looked after myself when your mother was alive and I've managed just fine since she died. I see no reason to change that now."

  "But Dad..." Ellen seemed to sense she'd lost the battle again. "Look, regardless of anything else you get lonely here. You know you do. At 'Sunset' you'd have lots of friends, people your own age who share your interests."

  "I don't need friends. All I want is peace, Ellen. Can't you give me that one small thing?" He didn't want to watch people die and didn't want them watching him either. Earl gestured towards the window, where the craggy, black outline of the Grand Mesa dominated the skyline like an ever-present approaching thunder storm. "I spent most of my life underneath that thing, Ellen. It comforts me being able to see it from up here now."

  Of course, they used to have friends, lots of friends. Isobel used to love entertaining and he'd been happy to indulge her. Even if he hadn't enjoyed the parties, he'd have put up with them just to see her smile. Her whole face would glow like the sun on a warm spring day.

  Bel had even put up with his beer buddies, including old Rafakat who quite honestly was a pain in the butt. Rafakat was always telling everyone how Earl had saved his life in the mines. But it wasn't like it was anything heroic; Earl had simply pushed the strange little guy out of the way by instinct when the roof came in and that was the end of it. But that didn't stop Rafakat from taking every opportunity to tell the tale, each time grander than the last and always finishing the same way: Earl saved my life-someday I'll make it up to him. And if that wasn't embarrassing enough, Rafakat was also partial to every crazy notion going and would happily prattle about them for hours .

  Earl had often wondered how Rafakat ended up working in the mines. He never seemed to quite belong and talk about clumsy. There wasn't a single piece of equipment that Rafakat hadn't tripped over at one time or another.