by Mark New
She looked annoyed. ‘I told you, I have qualifications. I set up the meeting and took the minutes when we were there. The rest was just, well, it didn’t seem wrong at the time.’ No, I’m sure it didn’t and I had a good idea why. Asking about the meeting itself would surrender my position so I let it go. I did, however, use the pause when we both nursed our drinks to send an urgent encrypted message via my implants to Avalon Red’s portal. I hadn’t even put my glass back on the table before I got a reply confirming that Queen Guinevere would provide what I had asked for when I saw her later. If this was the service I could always expect from Red, this was going to be an interesting partnership.
I waved the waiter over for a refill of our glasses. Neither of us said anything until after he had departed. I lifted my glass in the air.
‘To a beautiful and mutually beneficial partnership,’ I beamed.
Taylor shook her head, still a little red-faced but she picked up her glass for the toast anyway.
‘You’re...’ she began before tailing off.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘There are no words for what I am. Cheers!’
◆◆◆
Sir Edward had left me a present. Taylor left the hotel after we had finished dinner without accompanying me back to my suite. She had been a little quiet between the end of the toasting and departure but I was confident now that I had someone on the inside who was a known quantity and working for me. It didn’t necessarily mean that I would trust her completely but the information she could impart could be useful and I could give her enough crumbs to keep George happy and, crucially, not provoke him into taking further surveillance measures to get more. I saw Taylor to the lobby and it was when I passed the reception desk that the receptionist called me over and handed me the package that had arrived for me. She assured me that it had been through the hotel’s state-of-the-art security screening and that it was harmless. I thanked her and took it unopened back to my suite.
It was a medium-sized parcel about the size of the kind of large glossy hardback book containing photographs of picturesque scenes that you leave casually on your coffee table for guests to browse through and compliment you on your taste in books of photographs. It had come in plain packaging and I was amused to see when I unwrapped it that it was a book of photographs of old European castles. I hoped that one of the pictures would be of the real-life equivalent of Sir Edward’s fortified house from the vir-game. However, he hadn’t sent it for my coffee table. It was symptomatic of the hotel’s retro fittings that on the desk there was a paper knife with an ornamental handle, a nice counterpoint to my slimpad. I picked it up and slit carefully the bottom of both the front and back hardcovers. The seals opened cleanly and I reached in and withdrew the two plastic moulds; one from each cover. I resealed the covers - it was typical of Sir Edward that the book was undamaged - and made a slit at the bottom of the spine and drew out the contents. That, too, resealed easily and unnoticeably. I put the book on the desk so that hotel employees could gossip to each other about what was in the parcel.
Assembling the finished product from the thin moulds was child’s play for someone of my experience. When it was completed, I sat back and admired it. Trust Sir Edward not to send rubbish. This was a recent model flesch gun designed for special forces and undercover agents and it would fit snugly under my clothes and be undetectable to almost any kind of search, human or otherwise. As long as I avoided being comprehensively frisked, I was armed and dangerous. I stood up and concealed it against my back under my waistband so I could draw it easily. I tried retrieving it and assuming a ‘ready’ stance a couple of times until I was happy with the positioning. I felt like a proper bad-ass. If only I hadn’t been such a rotten shot. Still, I felt a lot better that I had some form of personal protection. In my haste to depart from Raro, I had left my own gun secured in the locker under my bed. I mentally ticked the flesch off the list that I had presented to Sir Edward. I hoped that the other items would be as readily available when I needed them.
I checked the time using my implants. I had about half an hour before my appointment with Guinevere so I decided to take a shower. One of the first things you learned after implants were fitted was that it was still important to wear some tech or carry a pad, as nothing gives you away faster than knowing the time to the exact second without having appeared to use any kind of instrumentation. In the Cooks I had seldom bothered with either. It took only minutes to go from my house to the bar and both locations were served with AIs so I could reasonably have used either for a time check. At any other time, because the Islands had never really embraced the hectic pace of the rest of the world, it was sufficient to rely on the indefinable but relaxed ‘Island Time’ and not bother about the actual time like the tourists did. The laid-back consequences had been one of the many things I liked about Rarotonga but the problem now was that, as I undressed to shower, I noted that I’d left my slimpad on the desk when I went down for dinner. I would have to be a bit wary that I didn’t undermine the advantage conferred by my upgraded implants through carelessness.
When I emerged from the shower I dressed in more of the clothing that Argonaut had had sent to the suite at Taylor’s request, just as I had done that morning. I was pleased to see, though, that my favourite t-shirt had been returned from the hotel laundry in pristine condition so I put that on instead of any of the formal shirts in the wardrobe. These days, a ‘formal’ shirt as far as I was concerned constituted anything which had a collar. I was going to a concert, admittedly Online so it didn’t really matter, and it just seemed right to wear the t-shirt I’d bought at that very concert on the day it originally happened. I found that I was looking forward to the gig immensely. That was another emotional response of the kind that I hadn’t experienced for many years.
I went into the bedroom and propped the pillows against the elaborate headboard. A four-poster might not be very rock ‘n’ roll but I was going to be Online for a while and I was old enough to want comfort ahead of authenticity.
It’s Legal had pioneered vir-concerts to the enrichment of both themselves, financially, and their fans, culturally (though I may be biased in my assessment). The band’s visionary manager had ruthlessly exploited the new tech in a way that all artists had since followed. Essentially, the band undertook world tours without ever leaving the UK. They simply hired a large east London venue that held around fifty thousand fans and sold tickets for those who wanted to attend in person. The innovation was to place tech at strategic points around the stadium and sell further tickets. You could either opt for the cheaper ticket which meant that you watched the concert as it streamed Online with all of the standard features of a professional broadcast or, for a premium, you could ‘attend’ it as though you were there in person. The concert would stream from several actual seating locations and, given the advances in tech, you would seem to be there despite being in the comfort of your own home. The sheer beauty, of course, was that those who actually physically attended would pay a huge sum for the privilege but at the same time, ticket sales for just one concert could amount to millions who shared the same vir-stream whilst each felt that they were an individual part of the show. It’s Legal went a step further by doing a ‘tour’ whereby the virtual tickets for each successive concert were sold exclusively to one geographic region. The setlist for each concert was drawn up to cater for the region so that the bestselling songs in that region received prominence. Overheads were reasonably low; profits were exceedingly large. It helped enormously that the band were accomplished musicians who tapped into the then current resurgence of proper rock bands. Obviously I would describe them thus; I was a fan and I had attended the band’s final show of the 2036 World Tour which just happened to be the band’s last concert ever. I was 24 years old and it was the best night of my life. And tonight I was going to relive it.
◆◆◆
I discovered that Guinevere had splashed out for a private box. I met her at the entrance to The Gardens stadium at the appoi
nted time to find her dressed appropriately in tour t-shirt and blue jeans in the company of a rather large similarly-dressed gentleman whom I recognised from the Round Table.
‘I don’t think you were introduced at the time,’ she said, rectifying the error, ‘this is Sir Lancelot. He’ll be with us in the box as protection.’
Sir Lancelot nodded at me and I nodded back. ‘I’m the warrior,’ was all he said. I could believe it. His height, in virtual terms, was over six and a half feet but it was the data stream around him that was most impressive. Even a cursory glance told me that he was equipped with any number of protective programs and without prying and risking getting slapped for my impudence, not a few of those programs seemed to incorporate a counter-strike capability. I was most amused as I looked at him when, unbidden, my implants flashed up an amber warning.
‘I’m advised,’ I told him, tapping my virtual head, ‘that you’re dangerous.’
‘Better believe it,’ he growled.
‘Shall we?’ Guinevere asked. We made our way through the gathering crowd to the ground-floor entrance to the private boxes.
After the band went their separate ways they remained in contact with each other personally and professionally and were quick to exploit further advances in tech. Not only were the tours and individual concerts lucrative at the time but now it was possible to sell re-runs with new vir-tech to the point where you could attend any one of them in the way you would explore a vir-scape. Where once the vir-ticket holders joined the concert at the point where the support band began playing, now the experience was fully virtual and you could attend Online in the same way that you could have attended in person at the time. For many years after the real show, I had been here to see it again and again. My habit had declined in my days in the military and dried up altogether when I began to suffer the crippling depressions. I was genuinely thrilled to be revisiting at a time when I felt that I could really enjoy it.
Our box was next but one to stage left with a perfect view. I had no idea what this cost at the time of the real concert but I suspected that the price hadn’t dropped much in the meantime. It’s Legal, defunct as a band or not, were legendary and this was probably the most iconic gig in rock history. I looked out at the gathering audience. Because of the tech, a lot of the people I could see were fellow vir-fans but the show retained some of the original audience. If you were lucky enough to have been there, you could now attend and see yourself as you were once upon a time. Guinevere had apparently hacked the archives after seeing my shirt and discovered that I’d attended the original show. It was a casual invasion of privacy and illegal searching that I found instructive. She was looking out into the crowd.
‘Are you here?’
‘Sadly, no.’ I indicated the front stalls where I’d once been happily sitting. ‘They use those for high-paying virtual fans now. I was in the middle, three rows back.’
‘Good seats,’ she commented. Yes, but not as good as a box.
‘I got complimentary tickets,’ I told her proudly. She looked at me surprised.
‘I didn’t know that. Where did they come from?’
‘I once worked with the band’s manager, Brian. He was a former management consultant until he gave it up to work full-time as the band’s manager. I knew him when I worked at a recording studio during school holidays. We kept in contact for some time and when he realised that this was going to be the band’s last ever concert, he sent me two comp tickets to be here in person.’
‘Lucky you. Who did you bring?’ This was Guinevere, the people person aspect, I realised.
‘A girl I was seeing at the time. It wasn’t anything serious.’
Guinevere let it drop. She and I had taken two of the three seats at the front of the box. Lancelot was standing at the back by the door looking menacing. She made a brief hand gesture and a file sailed into my implants. I ran a quick security check then opened it.
‘The report from George Latimer to his brother concerning the meeting in New Mexico,’ she confirmed. ‘It’s the best I could do. The actual minutes you mentioned were shut away too deep but the gist of it is in the report. I’ve had to withdraw the bug in the Argonaut system. They started to run a deep sweep and it would have been discovered. It means we lose an advantage but it’s better to remain undetected.’
‘Maybe all is not lost,’ I said and told her about Taylor potentially being our woman on the inside.
‘Well done,’ was her verdict. ‘Let’s hope she proves useful. I must say, I was led to believe you weren’t good with people.’
‘You don’t want to believe everything that Merlin tells you.’ I advised. She smiled.
The stadium had almost filled now and I heard a number of people walking along the corridor behind the boxes to take their places. I glanced over my shoulder to see Lancelot facing the door.
‘I’m interested to see this concert,’ Guinevere told me. ‘I’ve learned a great deal about humans in an academic sense but not so much from a practical point of view. I play vir-games so that I can interact with them and I frequent social areas but things like the appeal of music are still quite mysterious.’ If there was any indication that I was sitting with an alien, this was it. Her casual reference to ‘humans’ as a species with which she was only passingly familiar was decidedly odd. It would also have been odd if I’d heard it from an AI, even one of seneschal level. I’d spoken to a number of high-grade military AIs in my time, ally and foe alike, and despite their thought processes being different, I’d never felt that I’d ever been in the presence of something that wasn’t man-made. This just felt utterly different. Still, she’d treated me to the box seat so it was only polite to see if I could help.
‘Do you have any concept of aesthetics at all?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes. It’s just different to yours, I think. What I find aesthetically pleasing is an elegant solution to a programming problem or the mathematical beauty of a well-constructed vir-scape, for example.’
‘Are you happy with your Camelot vir-scape?’
‘Yes, mostly. It’s a bit of a compromise between form and function since I built it primarily as a headquarters of sorts. The chaotic swirl that I usually adopt for the Portal is nice in an abstract way but I have a tendency to want to throw it into a form.’
‘You said that you had several pre-prepared scenarios,’ I noted.
‘Yes. That arose from making sense of the chaos so it seemed a good idea to put it to use.’
‘Are all of the scenarios as realistic?’
‘I think so but I’m not the expert. You’ll have to take a look at them one day and tell me.’
‘Does the Evil One share your aesthetic sense?’
‘The Evil One?’ she chuckled. ‘Oh, that bot that addressed Merlin. The lower level AIs are programmed a little more simply, I’m afraid. The proper name for the one they refer to as Evil One, the name she calls herself, is The Ambrosia Promise.’
The house lights went down on a nearly full stadium. Even in 2056, not everyone wanted to see the support act. In my memory they were really good if not quite as good as the headliners. The stadium announcer was introducing ‘the future of rock’ as I spoke to Guinevere.
‘And she’s your sister according to Merlin.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she nodded as Force Celebre took to the stage in a blitz of powerchords so loud that I could only just make out what Guinevere was saying. ‘My older sister. My older completely psychotic sister.’
Chapter Fourteen
I had been through many ordeals in my life in the intervening time between attending the original concert and having a box seat for this re-run but I was pleased to note that in all that time my memory hadn’t been distorted or confused; Force Celebre really were good. Then I thought about it and I had to concede that it was entirely possible that some of the memory had been tinted with hindsight. The support band tonight had gone on to have a highly successful career, if not quite attaining the stellar heights of
their more illustrious headliners. Conversation necessarily ceased during their set so I just watched and listened and generally enjoyed myself. The crowd seemed to like it as well, both the part of the original audience that had been retained for authenticity and the new generation of vir-concert attendees. I glanced over at Guinevere several times during the performance and she appeared to be observing it very closely. I couldn’t tell if that meant that she liked it. I would have to enquire later. Sir Lancelot, in the meantime, was giving the door to the box his rapt attention. I was aware without having to concentrate that there was a lot of data activity behind me. Whatever his preferred method of guarding entailed in virtual terms it certainly resulted in him standing very, very still. There was, to my human eye, an unnaturalness about his appearance that was quite chilling. Another indication that Avalon Red was something unique in my experience. Eventually the band brought their act to a close and were greeted with enormous cheers and applause. Guinevere turned her attention back to me.
‘Is it as good as you remember it?’
‘Yes,’ I had to agree. ‘I wasn’t sure if I’d built it up in my head over the years as being better than it was but it seems not.’
‘And have you found that any of your memories are inaccurate?’
‘Nothing stands out.’
‘Isn’t it true that human memories are often subject to distortion?’ Casual conversation, alien style.
‘I’m not an expert but I think that it’s true that someone’s memory of an event can be inaccurate for any number of reasons and that, over time, memories may be subject to degradation.’
The roadies were clearing the stage while half of the crowd headed for the bar.
‘And the more traumatic the memory, the more liable it is to distortion?’
‘That sounds reasonable but, like I said, I’m not an expert.’
