Avalon Red

by Mark New

‘Will do. Now, do you need me to find a porter to carry you to your room or can you manage?’

  ‘I believe I can make it alone, thank you kindly.’

  She waved and disappeared into the street. I made my way to my room amazingly quickly for someone of my age.

  There were no messages with the AI so I hopped up on the bed and made myself comfortable. I had about forty-five minutes before I was due to receive the location of the meeting. There wasn’t much more I could do in the way of preparation and there wasn’t much time to become terrified. As I lay there staring at the ceiling, I wondered if I really had much longer to live. My biggest regret, should I die in the next couple of hours, was that I hadn’t had the chance to use the new upgraded implants in anger. Of course, I might die in cyber-combat which would take care of that problem. I had made a will which was held by the UK Ministry of Defence and would be released to my nominated lawyers upon my death but I didn’t really have much to bequeath apart from the cottage in Dorset, a few knick-knacks and, oh yes, the significant assets being held by my bank. Sadly, if I died and failed to prevent Ambrosia from killing everyone, there wouldn’t be time for my relatives to enjoy my small fortune.

  Lancelot arrived in the bot about five minutes before the call was due.

  ‘Just out of interest, where actually are you when you use the bot?’

  ‘That’s what interests you?’ he scoffed. ‘It varies. At the moment I’m in the south gatehouse at Camelot, waiting to meet you in whatever game my ugly sister has chosen.’

  ‘Is there any way that I could trace your whereabouts from your comms presence?’

  ‘I don’t know of any way, no.’ He paused. ‘Were you thinking that if she uses a bot as an avatar instead of appearing in person, you might be able to trace her location?’

  ‘Something like that, yes. Pity.’

  ‘Nice try.’ There was a hint of admiration. I noted that communication with Lancelot was now extremely fast and comprehensible. The implants themselves couldn’t process everything as my personal language, and indeed, thinking skills were still largely organic. I wondered if I was just thinking faster. Another one for Doc to answer.

  The message, when it arrived, was short and sweet and sent encrypted to my Online inbox.

  ‘MetroSim Challenge. 18765 Commercial Avenue, South District. Penthouse Office Suite. Do you agree?’

  I shared it with Lancelot.

  ‘It’s genuinely semi-public. You could make a real fuss in there,’ he mused even as he was bringing up a virtual map of the ingame location. ‘I could wait in the virtual café across the street.’

  ‘So there’s no reason to say no, then?’

  ‘She’s delivered what we were expecting,’ he shrugged.

  I wasn’t sure if I was happy about that or not but I replied instantly: ‘Agreed. I look forward to meeting you in fifteen minutes.’

  Lancelot left the bot and I met him about two seconds later two blocks from the virtual address. Getting through the game portal had been a breeze. The more I used the implants, the better I got at bamboozling AIs. We walked up Commercial Avenue among the throng of pedestrians. I had the deep labelling turned on and I could see that the vast majority of people were human players. At the same time I interrogated the seneschal in an effort to break the privacy settings. Virtual real estate could be bought by virtual coin and could be lucrative in the real world and I wanted to know who owned the address I’d been given. The seneschal gave me no difficulty. Evidently Lancelot had been doing the same. We both stopped dead in our tracks, annoying passers-by who had to take avoiding action.

  ‘Uh, John?’ he showed me the same information as I was looking at already.

  ‘So I see. Oh, shit.’

  The block in which I was to meet The Ambrosia Promise was owned by a virtual company called Devonshire Prestige Commercial Inc. Like a lot of vir-estate ownerships it was a shell company but with my deeper level access I could trace the real world owner. Lancelot had done the same. Devonshire Prestige Commercial Inc was wholly owned by one human individual by the name of Rebecca Kingston.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  We continued along the street towards the café we’d pinpointed as Lancelot’s vantage point.

  ‘But she was the one who told me about Naimittika,’ I tried to pursue the train of thought. ‘She certainly seemed concerned about it. If that was all an act then her drama skills are significantly better than they used to be.’

  ‘Than they used to be when you knew her a decade ago,’ Lancelot highlighted the flaw in my argument. Becky would have had ample time to learn new skills, especially if money was the motivation. It still seemed a stretch that she would be with the opposition but I had to consider the possibility.

  ‘So she would think that she was recruiting me to work for Argonaut while she took a share of the spoils from the ransom?’

  ‘While not knowing that my sister had hoodwinked her into being her patsy.’

  ‘”Patsy”? Have you been reading Raymond Chandler again?’

  ‘Guinevere said it would be good for my understanding of human interactions.’ Good guess on my part and a little unnerving that I was right first time.

  ‘I’m sure that I was supposed to take the fall as well, assuming that things worked out the way she - or bad guys unknown - intended.’

  We had reached the door of the café and I lingered for a second at the entrance still deep in thought. Someone inside wanting to leave was the spur for me to open the door and lead Lancelot inside. I had a brief look around for a suitable table and did a double-take in surprise.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Lancelot was obviously on high alert and caught my action. I looked around again and confirmed what I thought.

  ‘Nothing particularly, it’s just that this café is the spitting image of the one near the Argonaut building. The one owned by Taylor’s friend.’ I tried to remember its name and to resist the temptation to go back into the street to check the name above this establishment. ‘Kathy’s Bistro, that was it.’ Lancelot frowned as we made our way to the corner table by the window that looked out on to the street. As we sat down, I checked the menu that lit up on the table and saw ‘Kathy’s Bistro’ in large friendly letters at the top. The interrogation of the game seneschal was child’s play. Lancelot had done the same thing.

  ‘Kathy owns both the real and the virtual versions,’ he noted. I continued to read the menu. At the bottom it contained a friendly invitation to visit the real-life version of the bistro and it gave the address.

  ‘It’s still one more coincidence than I’d like,’ I muttered.

  ‘You don’t play enough vir-games, Harvard,’ Lancelot laughed. I didn’t know what he meant but a raised eyebrow on my part was now enough to prompt him to explain further. We’d come a long way in a short time since he was grunting at me at the It’s Legal concert. He sighed. ‘Virtual real estate is big business and has a real world value. It wouldn’t be odd if staff from Argonaut frequented the real bistro; well, you already know Taylor knows the owner well and perhaps Becky does too. So say they get talking and the subject comes up of the value of having a virtual presence in a popular game to drum up real business. Maybe Becky - who we know is good at MetroSim - mentions that near where she has a place ingame there is a good opportunity for a bistro. Kathy might be tempted. No foul play, no suspicious circumstances, just one friend helping another. It might even be Kathy who told Becky about the office block if the bistro was already here.’

  ‘The office acquisition pre-dated the bistro purchase,’ I said reading off the labels, ‘but I take the point. Surely if Becky was going to do something illegal she wouldn’t want anyone she knew owning vir-property near her? Does that lessen the likelihood that she’s gone bad?’

  ‘Unless she is double-bluffing,’ Lancelot shrugged. ‘Hey, you humans invented all this smoke and mirrors stuff; you figure it out.’

  ‘All we know is that Ambrosia wants to meet me in the penthouse office over
there.’ I nodded in the direction of the office just up the street on the opposite side of the road.

  To my surprise, a bot waitress brought us a coffee each. Lancelot must have ordered while I was absorbed in the mystery. He chuckled at my expression.

  ‘Pay attention, Colonel. It might save your life one day.’

  I smiled and began: ‘Regular pedestrian traffic in and out of the entrance, nothing unusual, nobody just hanging around like a sentinel bot would do; tinted windows on all floors; looks like a brass plaque on the entrance pillar with lots of writing, possibly a list of lessees so Ambrosia might just have hired the office for the day; penthouse picture windows are the non-opening kind but with my capabilities I could destroy them from inside and jump out to make a big public fuss...’

  Lancelot raised a hand ‘Whoa there, soldier. OK, so maybe you were paying attention to something else.’

  ‘Have I missed anything?’

  ‘A security guard patrols the lobby. The windows are too tinted to see far in but he comes to the door sometimes when there is movement in or out. He’d be my bot if I was the baddie. That’s all, though. Pretty good for a human.’ He said it grudgingly but I was pleased anyway.

  I checked the time. Three minutes. ‘You’ll stay at this table?’

  ‘Yes. If you need help just holler, or break the window. If it gets to that it won’t matter that The Ambrosia Promise will know you’re communicating with me.’

  ‘Then I’ll see you later - I hope.’

  He waved me off. ‘Best of luck, John.’ The most worrying thing was that he said it sincerely. Both he and I assumed that I really did need luck.

  I left the bistro and directly crossed the busy street which meant that I had to turn left on the other side and walk up to the entrance to the office building. Most of the passing vehicles were gleaming upmarket versions of their real counterparts. This was an affluent neighbourhood ingame and must be occupied by serious players. I continued to monitor the people and saw that they were nearly all human. There were one or two maintenance bots disguised as characters and I kept an eye on them but none seemed dangerous. I slowly sauntered by the pillar and saw that the writing on the plaque did indeed have inscribed the companies leasing various floors. Unfortunately, there was no name against the penthouse office. I checked the deep labelling and discovered that none of the floors were separately registered to the named firms. Either it wasn’t required by game regulations or it could all be a front and the named firms were a sham. By this time I had reached the entrance door. I resisted the impulse to look back at the bistro though it wouldn’t have given away anything Ambrosia didn’t already know assuming she had watched Lancelot and I walk up the street. I took a deep breath in my real-life body lying on the bed in the hotel room and pushed open the virtual door ingame.

  The lobby continued the upmarket theme of the street. The door opened into a wide expanse of marble and tile with scattered comfortable seating here and there around the large pillars. In front of me by the far wall was an ornate reception desk staffed by a bot that the labelling told me was owned by the freeholder. To the right of the desk as I looked at it was a bank of four elevators set along the back wall and to the left of the desk was a large staircase of the kind that people danced down in top hat and tails in vir-musicals set in the nineteen thirties. I headed slowly for the elevators taking a close look at the security guard as I did. He was headed past me to the front door and, as Lancelot had said, he was a bot. Another one owned by the freehold company that was in turn owned by Becky. The whole building must have been worth a pretty penny even as virtual estate. Funny, Becky hadn’t mentioned being rich even though she’d told me about features of the game back in the Cooks.

  I reached the elevators and waited for one to become available. There were a number of smartly-dressed people milling around the area presumably waiting as well. Two of the elevators opened at the same time on the two ends of the bank which split those waiting into two uneven groups. I was in the small group of three which took the one nearest the right wall. There was no operator so I checked the labels of both the man who pressed the button and his female companion. Both were human and both were accountants from the USA according to their details.

  ‘Which floor?’ he asked me, with finger poised over the control.

  ‘Penthouse suite, please,’ I said. He pressed the top button with a glance at the woman.

  ‘You’re English?’ she enquired. Even if the virtual accent hadn’t given it away, the public label identified me as such. I was an actual human player as far as the seneschal was concerned and a British lawyer ingame. A deliberate choice on my part as I didn’t want to spook Ambrosia unnecessarily by playing at being a bot.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve worked here for two years and never been to the top floor,’ she remarked.

  ‘Me neither,’ said the man, ‘I think it’s reserved for the company that owns the building. Is that right?’ By this time I’d checked their deeper level credentials. Some of us lie and cheat our way around Online and some are utterly and completely straight, like these two. Both were genuine accountants and both worked for the firm that leased the fourteenth floor. I presumed that the firm’s office operation here was a branch of their Online presence. After all, you never knew when a player might suddenly break off from pursuing ingame riches and decide he needed a real-life tax review or something.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I just got told to attend an appointment there.’

  By that time, fortunately, we had reached their floor. That’s the beauty of Online buildings: elevators can be designed for speed without bothering with boring technical details like squishing humans with g-forces.

  ‘Nice meeting you,’ the woman said as they alighted.

  ‘Have a good day,’ I said insincerely as the man nodded his farewell.

  Alone in the elevator, I brought up a schematic of the shaft and the floors from the maintenance schedule. The top floor was laid out as I’d seen in the overview when we were researching ownership. There didn’t seem to be any hidden areas or traps for the unwary. That didn’t mean that this meeting was going to go smoothly but at least, if it turned into open warfare, neither of us would have the advantage of terrain.

  The doors opened on the penthouse level into a lobby area. As I stepped out and turned right I could see that I was in a corridor running the length of the floor. I passed the rest of the elevator bank to my right and noted that at the far end there was only wall. The magnificent staircase didn’t extend this far up, apparently. That’s the other advantage to virtual architecture: no fire regulations to worry about so no fire door or escape route required. On my left the corridor was just wall except for a double door at the centre, making it offset from the elevator bank. As it was the only place to go I walked along to it. When I turned to face the doors, inscribed with the name of the shell company ‘Devonshire Prestige Commercial, Inc.’, they opened for me.

  I walked into a small lobby that contained an unattended desk and chair to my left which must have been for a receptionist. The desk was bare. In front of me was a single door with what looked like an intercom on the wall to the left. I went up to it as the main doors closed behind me and pressed the button on the wall.

  ‘Who is calling, please?’ asked a pleasant female voice. I didn’t know if I was relieved that it wasn’t Becky. It sounded much younger. I took a breath in reality and readied for combat.

  ‘Colonel John Harvard.’

  ‘Please come in, Colonel,’ the voice said. The door clicked open and I pushed at it and entered.

  It was a vast expanse of a room that seemed to take up the whole of the floor. Though the windows on all three sides in front of me were tinted, the room was well lit by the virtual sunshine that was allowed through. It was deeply carpeted and there were none of the pillars that ‘supported’ the lobby in its quirky nod to real construction. Those parts of the walls that weren’t windows were covered in wall scr
eens that displayed a few old master paintings seemingly at random. I didn’t use the optical resolution of the implants to see what the paintings depicted for fear of tipping off my abilities to my host. At the far end of the room was a very big desk behind which was an equally big comfortable looking chair. In front of the desk were two similarly designed but smaller chairs facing it. It all looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t fathom why that might be. About halfway along the wall to my left was a sitting area that had sofas and a coffee table. It looked like there was a beverage or two brewing with what looked like a teapot and cups on the table. Apart from that, the room was empty of furniture.

  A figure emerged from behind the big desk and came to meet me midway across the room. I saw immediately that she was a slight young blonde woman seemingly in her mid-twenties (roughly Taylor’s age) wearing a rather short sleeveless summer dress bearing a flower pattern. Her shoes seemed barely to exist and I assumed that the real-world analogue of them would cost several months’ rent of my hut in the Cooks.

  As we met in the middle of the room she extended a hand and smiled at me as I towered over her.

  ‘Colonel Harvard, how delightful to meet you at last. I’m The Ambrosia Promise.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, too,’ I said shaking her hand warily. She waved at the sofa area.

  ‘Shall we sit? The tea will be ready in a moment.’

  As we took the long walk to the teapot, I felt a slight brush in my head. She was sweeping at the comms bot for evidence that I wasn’t alone. The defences held but I had been expecting something like it and relaxed them enough that she could verify that I didn’t have a passenger.

  ‘My,’ she laughed, ‘you’re packing some serious shielding there.’ I laughed too without making any further comment. She took a seat on the sofa with its back to the wall. Kicking off her shoes she tucked her legs up under her. I sat down in the opposite sofa with the table between us.

  ‘I hope we can have a pleasant chat over tea,’ she gushed, ‘but I must apologise to you at the outset and hope you don’t think so badly of me, after all. ’