Reality Hack

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘But then we get to the interesting part. Calcium arsenate. Aconitine. Hyoscyamine. Poisons, Mister Sudbury. My colleague here isn’t just a great pair of legs and a sultry voice: she’s also a scientist and statistician. What do you think the chances are of surviving that lot, Sergeant Harper?’

  ‘Somewhere between a snowball’s chance in Hell and a whelk’s chance in a supernova, Detective Inspector,’ Nisa replied.

  ‘Are those technical terms, Sergeant?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I could work out the numbers, but basically–’

  ‘But they don’t die!’ Sudbury snapped.

  ‘You say that,’ Kellog replied, ‘but we’ve got a body with several of the same chemicals in it. A dead body, with your drug in what’s left of its system.’

  Sudbury was looking white. He had known about Nairn.

  ‘So,’ Kellog went on, ‘we have a body and you are selling what is a lethal cocktail of chemicals as a legal high. Whatever you think it should do, who do you think a jury will believe when arsenic, deadly nightshade, and henbane get mentioned? Or… you tell us who’s producing this crap and we see what we can do.’

  Sudbury opened his mouth, hesitated, and glanced at Nisa. She just raised her eyebrows and folded her arms.

  ‘I don’t know where it comes from, but I can give you the guy who sells it to me.’

  ‘It’s a start,’ Kellog said, pushing a sheet of paper and a pen across the table toward Sudbury.

  Salford.

  Nisa struggled out of a fitful sleep and blinked at the light creeping in around the curtains. She fumbled her phone off the shelf above her bed and thumbed the screen on. It was just after four pm. Which meant she had had three hours’ sleep. Not enough, but she had a feeling she was not going to get much more.

  The dream had been there again. Darkness and voices, but she thought she remembered hearing Sudbury mentioned, and another name, Harold. Except that Sudbury’s first name was Edward. She shrugged and peeled back the slightly damp sheets. It was a dream, or a nightmare, and they did not have to make sense. And she needed a shower, and coffee.

  Twenty minutes later she was sitting in a sports bar on the Quays with a cup of coffee watching the news on a TV mounted at the back of the bar. The announcer was saying that the Manchester police had raided several addresses throughout the city that afternoon following the discovery of a drug ring. There was an additional warning that the ring had been cutting their product with arsenic compounds.

  ‘Shit like that on the streets,’ the barman grumbled. ‘No wonder the place is going to the dogs.’

  Nisa gave him a smile and said nothing. They had left the heavy work to the locals figuring that they could handle it and if anything particularly odd was found it would not take long to get there. It looked like the case was wrapped and they could go home, but somehow Nisa felt that it was not over.

  Her phone buzzed and she picked up her coffee, taking it across to an empty table and answering as she walked.

  ‘Where are you?’ Kellog’s voice asked without preamble.

  ‘Sports bar down the road. They have decent coffee.’

  ‘Huh. Havers is on her way over with some information. We’re heading back in the morning, but it looks like the job’s not done yet.’

  ‘No?’ She wondered whether he caught her lack of surprise.

  ‘No. Looks like this stuff is being made down south. Manchester is just the test bed.’

  ‘And Havers couldn’t have just sent the information?’

  ‘She wants to say goodbye, thank us for the help. We’re going out to dinner. Be about an hour.’

  ‘Oh… great. I have nothing to wear.’

  ~~~

  The restaurant at the Lowry Centre seemed like a nice place, kind of modern to go with the design of the building. Nisa thought that a bit incongruous given the kind of thing Lowry had painted, but it was at least a good thing that the place was, more or less, in the area he had lived.

  She felt a little incongruous herself in the skirt, top, and heels she had bought for her undercover work. She had managed to get the outfit cleaned and pressed in thirty minutes at a local dry cleaner, but she was not sure the outfit went with the setting. Havers was actually in a dress though, quite a short one, so it felt less wrong. Kellog was, of course, in a suit. At least he had dumped the tie.

  ‘So,’ Havers said, ‘the supplier at this end is singing like it’s spring and the sap is rising. He’s given us the location of the main lab. They’re using an old industrial unit on the edge of some place called Harold Hill.’

  Nisa felt a shiver run down her spine. Harold Hill. Sudbury and Harold had been in the dream, and here they were again.

  ‘I know the place,’ Kellog said, his eyes scanning the menu. ‘It’s out on the A12. We can get authorisation to hit it, but some surveillance would probably not go amiss.’

  ‘I’d hurry. They’re going to know we hit their operation up here.’

  ‘You’ve sent the data to the Rabbit Hole?’ Havers gave a nod and Kellog took out his phone. He was pretty quick at typing with one thumb. ‘Hanson will have the place under watch inside of an hour if I know her.’

  ‘Then we’re officially handing the case off to you. Keep us up to date.’

  Kellog gave a nod. ‘The carbonara, I think. After last night I don’t want anything heavy. I believe I’ll even have a glass of wine.’

  ‘That does it,’ Nisa said, trying to get back into the mood, ‘the world is about to end.’

  ~~~

  There had been more than one glass of wine. Havers was not drinking, since she was driving, and a bottle had been shared between Nisa and Kellog, though she thought she had had more than him. She was certainly feeling a little tipsy as he escorted her to her room.

  ‘You are a little drunk,’ he commented as she tried to open the door.

  ‘I’m just nicely stewed,’ she replied. ‘Hopefully I’ll sleep better.’

  ‘I know a charm for hangovers.’

  Nisa giggled, the door opened, and she started to fall through it. Kellog either had good reflexes or he was expecting something like that. He caught her, his hands on her ribs. She felt his fingers push against the underside of her right breast and, almost surprisingly, there was a sudden warm feeling between her legs.

  ‘You aren’t wearing anything under that top, are you?’ Kellog commented.

  ‘No.’

  Pulling her upright, he slid his thumb over bare flesh. His other hand slid over her stomach. The warmth grew and she felt his chest, firm and strong, against her back. He was not moving his hands.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ she whispered before her brain had caught up with what she was saying.

  ‘I… can’t.’ The hands were gone. He stepped back and walked away quickly, almost as if he did not trust himself to keep going if he moved slower.

  ‘Well… crap,’ Nisa muttered.

  Westminster, London, September 18th.

  ‘We have eyes and ears on the building,’ Hanson said. ‘There have been comings and goings, but no indication that they’ve been disturbed or that they plan to leave.’

  ‘That seems… odd,’ Kellog said.

  ‘Yes, but we’re going to avoid looking this gift in the teeth and keep an eye on them. We’ll observe for as long as possible and then hit them.’

  ‘When?’ Nisa asked. ‘I’m, uh, assuming you’ll want me there.’

  ‘And armed,’ Hanson replied. ‘It seems likely that these people will take our intrusion ungracefully. However, you never can tell. Perhaps these are sensible criminals.’

  ‘Isn’t that some kind of oxymoron?’

  ‘Often. To answer your question, Sunday. Unless they make a move or we see additional difficulty, we’ll go in on Sunday.’

  Harold Hill, September 21st.

  ‘Industrial unit’ was, perhaps, an overly generous description of the building. It was more like a hut formed of prefabricated structures bolted together and held up off th
e ground on breeze blocks, though there was one more permanent, concrete structure set beside it.

  Nisa felt strangely tense as she watched the doors through a pair of binoculars. Yes, she was about to go on a raid into a drug lab, but the really hard work was going to be down to the ART officers. Unlike going into Jasperson’s house, this time she was in an anti-knife vest which she had been told would stop light gunfire. The gas mask was something of an inconvenience and she was not sure she was going to get used to that any time soon, but it could wait until they went in and it seemed a wise precaution.

  Still, with all the prep, she felt as though something bad was going to happen. The dream was still haunting her and she could not shake the feeling that it meant something.

  ‘We’re ready,’ Kellog said. ‘Team A will hit the hut. We’ll go into the concrete building with team B.’

  ‘You think that’ll be where the main lab is?’ Nisa asked.

  ‘I think if I were manufacturing alchemical drugs I didn’t want someone to know about, I’d use the building with no windows.’

  ‘Good point.’

  One of the ART guys waved at them, and it was time to go. And it all became a rush. Nisa brought up the rear, pulling on her mask as she went and then readying her pistol. She heard two loud bangs as the lead men breached the doors with frangible rounds from shotguns. She heard shouting from the other building, but there seemed to be no one in the concrete building.

  There were tables with various odd-looking chemical apparatus on them. Nisa had no clue about alchemy, but she did know that alchemists had been the forerunners of chemists, and that some of the basic equipment had remained unchanged. Things bubbled in glass globes with long spouts attached. Bunsen burners hissed as they gave off hot, blue flames. There were even spiral tubes of glass with liquids shunting along them periodically. It almost looked too haphazard to be a functioning production facility.

  Nisa’s sense of dread was just getting deeper, but there was something else now, something more specific. There was something magical in the building with them and, somehow, it felt wrong.

  ‘It’s clear, sir,’ an officer said to Kellog, his voice muffled by his mask, ‘but there’s something in the back you should see.’

  He took them to a screened-off section at the rear of the building and they looked down at the hole which had been cut into the concrete base. It was rough, hacked out with pickaxes at best estimate, and then they had dug down further, but the soil looked odd, wrong, as though it had been soaked in oil, and the concrete appeared to have eroded.

  As Nisa looked down, something seemed to pulse in the pit. There was something there, shifting in the darkness. She frowned and stared harder, but whatever it was, it was not going to show itself.

  ‘Can I get a light here?’ she called out.

  ‘You see something?’ Kellog asked.

  ‘Not sure, but I feel something. I think there’s something down there.’

  There was another pulse and this time Kellog saw it. ‘Like… a light through water,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe.’ Nisa turned as one of the men arrived with a large search-and-rescue lamp. ‘Let’s see if this helps.’ Turning the light on, Nisa pointed it down the hole.

  The pain in her head was sudden and intense. She thought she heard Kellog yell something, maybe ‘get back,’ but she was momentarily paralysed by the overwhelming sense of magic. Something like a strong electric current washed over her skin and her muscles tensed, and the pain grew to unbearable levels…

  Part Six: The Real World

  Bloomsbury, London, November 15th, 2036.

  ‘Man, I never thought she’d get nailed by the Glitch in the drug lab.’

  Nisa heard the voice and struggled to figure out what she was hearing, and who. And while she was at it, where the fuck she was. It had sounded a little like Alexander Maxim, but somehow not.

  ‘Twenty quid.’ That voice was Norbery’s. ‘I called it.’

  ‘Be quiet, the both of you.’ Kellog? ‘She’s coming around.’

  Nisa’s eyes flickered open and she looked up at a ring of expectant faces. She recognised all of them, but somehow they were not the same people. Kellog was smiling at her. Maxim was also smiling, but he looked all wrong in a band T-shirt and torn jeans. Norbery looked about the same, but there was no wedding ring on his finger. Sandra seemed about the same, down to a white dress which looked like a nurse’s uniform, and she was checking displays on…

  Tilting her head back, Nisa could see the huge machine behind her. It was, as best she could tell, some sort of computer system with a tunnel built into it a bit like you saw on an MRI machine. The technology looked… No, the technology was far too advanced.

  ‘What…’ she said. ‘What’s going on? Where am I?’

  Various smiles faded. ‘What do you remember?’ Kellog asked. ‘You know who you are?’

  ‘Nisa Harper. I was… I was raiding a drug lab.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ Norbery muttered.

  ‘We knew this was a possibility,’ Kellog said, calmly. ‘We knew the depth of immersion might result in some difficulty returning to the real world.’

  ‘The… real world?’ Nisa asked.

  Kellog nodded. ‘Your name is Nisa Harper; you are not a mathematics drop-out turned magical policewoman. You are a computer sciences researcher at UCL. We’ve been conducting experiments into wireless neural induction technologies. Total immersion virtual reality for everyone, not just people with wires in their heads. You volunteered to be first to try a long-term run. You’ve been inside a computer-generated virtual world for the past three days…’

  ‘Three days! I was… I mean, I remember my childhood, growing up. It’s been months since I joined XC!’

  ‘Most of it is implanted memories,’ Norbery told her. ‘The game began when you first cracked the light spell. That was your starting character skill.’

  ‘It… was a game?’

  ‘Well, game is not quite the right word,’ Maxim said. ‘The initial conditions are set, but once it’s running, it’s like… being in a novel which your mind is writing along with the computer.’ He grinned. ‘That is a brilliant piece of programming, by the way. You should be proud of yourself.’

  Nisa pushed herself into a sitting position and then swung her legs off the side of the bench she was lying on. It was on rollers, designed to move into the cavity in the computer. And she was wearing what looked like a plastic hospital gown.

  ‘What’s the date?’ she asked.

  ‘Fifteenth of November,’ Kellog replied, ‘twenty-thirty-six.’

  Nisa closed her eyes. ‘None of this is making sense. I’ll get my real memories back soon, right?’

  ‘That’s part of the experiment. We don’t absolutely know.’

  ‘They should come back,’ Sandra put in. ‘We’re just not sure how long it’ll take, and it may come back in dribs and drabs, or all in a rush. All your medical readouts are in the green. I think the best thing would be to get you home and save the complicated debriefing until Monday.’

  There were nods, but Nisa was not so sure. ‘I don’t think I should be alone…’

  Kellog winced. ‘You won’t be. Sandra, you’d best ring ahead…’

  Isle of Dogs.

  She lived, apparently, in a modern apartment building on the river. It looked expensive, very expensive, so she figured virtual reality research paid well. Kellog had suggested they stay quiet on the drive over. He said it was best not to confuse her with details. Her home would let her sink back into the real world and probably help her get her memories back.

  He dropped her off outside the building and told her that it was apartment thirty-three, and she watched him drive away… Or she had watched the car drive away since it could do that perfectly well without his assistance. There had been Google logos all over the place on the thing. Maybe they had taken over the world. Spike had always said they…

  Spike was a computer program in a VR system. She had to try
to remember that. Turning, she headed for the door.

  A black cat welcomed her into the apartment, rubbing around her legs and making her giggle as she walked down a short hall and into a large, open lounge with a huge window opening on to a balcony. She could see the Thames slipping past below.

  ‘Yes, Faline, she’s back. Don’t make her break her neck now she’s here.’

  Nisa turned at the sound of the voice. Alaina Peters was standing in a doorway, bedroom or kitchen, Nisa was not sure. She remembered none of the layout. Alaina was dressed in a short, silky wrap, her feet bare. The real one seemed just as sexy as the virtual one and… And it made sense of the weird attraction she had felt to the character in the game. She had wanted virtual Alaina because in the real world…

  ‘Sandra called,’ Alaina said a little hesitantly. ‘You… really don’t remember me?’

  ‘There was a version of you in the game. I remember her, but… Sorry. They say it’ll all come back. Just a matter of time.’

  ‘Maybe we can jog your memory.’ Alaina crossed the room and snaked an arm up and around Nisa’s neck, and they were kissing. Nisa responded without thought, as though it was totally natural. It was totally natural, and electric. A dull throb began between Nisa’s legs as the kiss continued until they had to break for air. ‘How… how’s that?’ Alaina asked, her voice husky.

  ‘Not sure,’ Nisa replied, leaning forward to kiss Alaina’s neck below her ear. ‘I think there was something.’ Another kiss grazed Alaina’s jaw. ‘We should try again.’

  ‘Oh God, yes please!’

  ~~~

  The door had led to the bedroom. They lay amid the wreckage of crumpled sheets, basking in the afterglow. Alaina’s breathing was still ragged and she lay sprawled on the bed, unwilling to try to move just yet.

  ‘That,’ she said, ‘was crazy. I almost hope some of this game you played sticks around. You’re never normally that wild. Not that I don’t love what you do to me anyway, but…’

  ‘Crazy can be good sometimes?’

  ‘That.’

  ‘Well, I’ll remember you properly soon, but for right now it’s like this is the first time.’