“But that’s how it’s done,” Jane said, and handed her a small vial.
Maura waved it off, but Jane got a very intense look in her eye and pressed it into her hand. “You’ve never stood up to a monster like that, have you?” She scanned Maura’s face and then she shook her head.
“I can see that it’s the first time for you. And you did it by accident, for sure. You will come to regret it, soon, no doubt.” She got another vial of the same colored liquid and put it in Maura’s pocket in addition to her hand. “You’re going to need these, trust me.”
Maura did not like at all where this was going. Or her newfound fame. There was a notification sound on her phone that she only noticed because there was a very temporary lull in the noise around her.
She checked it. There were forty-three new messages. She added those to the growing list of things she was not happy about. With a thanks to Jane, she trudged off past the celebrating throngs of orcs and back to her office. She waved to Crash on her way out.
4
Astrid finished getting ready in the mirror. Perfect. Then she prepared for her first video session of the day as she always did. With some deep breathing and a little bit of light stretching, followed by half a glass of rum.
Okay, ready. She turned to go back into her office and nearly fell over backwards when she saw the familiar centaur standing between her bedroom and her office.
Now she was doing shallow breathing and her heart was racing. “Othello! What in the blue blazes of stars are you doing here on my-“
She had meant to finish with the words ‘space station’, of course. Except that he was no longer there. Now she was talking to herself.
She narrowed her eyes and charged forward, looking around the room, but she knew what she saw, and what she saw was her very notorious ex-boyfriend in the middle of her hallway. And then he had disappeared, right before her very eyes.
Which was weird. And she knew weird when she saw it, because she dealt a fairly brisk trade in weird. Real magic didn’t grow on trees in this universe, and she basically had the market cornered.
And that meant that some people were doing their best to drive her out of it. Well, it wasn’t going to work, no way. Not even if they found a way to start haunting her with exes.
“I’m not going anywhere this time, Anti-Magic Initiative. You hear?” she shouted, shaking her fist. “You’re making fools of yourself, because now it’s just starting to feel like harassment. Don’t think I won’t sic my lawyers on you again.”
She did one more quick check around the apartment before getting settled in to do some actual work. She slumped in her chair and sighed. Then she checked her calendar. Figures. It’s Monday.
Ben arrived for work sleep deprived and stressed out. So much for the promotion he’d always wanted. He paused and took a deep breath before opening the communications center door. The soul-crushing metal door into the never-ending string of problems that were now his responsibility. Welcome to management.
This never happened to the previous communications supervisor. He always had smooth sailing, and things humming along with only an occasional glitch to deal with.
He wouldn’t trade with the previous guy, though, considering the previous guy was dead, having had the unfortunate luck of being on duty when a deranged scientist came in a few weeks ago.
He opened the door and went in. And then there were the ghosts. Four of them crouched in the far corner of the room. Ironically, they were see-through replicas of the band Chemical Zombies.
There was Fleek, mohawk and all. They even had their instruments and were playing a rather rousing version of the song ‘Exploding Planets and All That They Entail’ from the album of the same name off the tour that was also named for it. It was a good song.
Ironically, Ben just happened to wear his t-shirt from that very same tour to work that day. He glanced at them, then down at his shirt and then back at them. Weird coincidence, that.
Hey, if his day was going to suck, then at least the music was going to be good. No need for the radio with a good, live ghost band.
He nodded at his coworkers, who were busily putting out communications fires. Well, not literal fires, but problems. There were problems all over the station. As had been the norm for the last few weeks. Try as he might, Ben still hadn’t been able to isolate the source of the problems.
He knew they were there, though, taunting him. He had the awful, nagging feeling that the answer was right there under his nose. It had been keeping him from getting his full three point five hours of sleep lately.
A quick glance around the room revealed half a dozen more ghosts. Some hovered at the top of the ceiling, and some just lurked around in the corners sucking up electricity.
Ben couldn’t be sure if the recent power surge was the cause of the ghosts sucking it all up or the effect which was drawing them here.
He was ignoring that problem though, because he already had one looming mystery gnawing at him and he didn’t have the time, patience, or sleep to deal with any more.
The Chemical Zombie ghosts were different though. Before today the ghosts were generic, not knockoffs of famous people. These were recognizable even though they were see through. They were also clearly playing the part, including the correct musical notes.
Carl looked up at him, his eyes were blood shot and he was drinking the rest of a red bull. He looked at Ben’s shirt. “Hey, boss. Did you really get tickets to the Chemical Zombies Exploding Planets tour?”
“Oh yeah.” He smiled. “I got lucky and found a few extra seats when they were on Virgon Six. Best. Concert. Ever.” He looked over at the ghost band in the corner. “Those guys don’t sound half bad for knockoffs, how long have they been here?”
Carl looked at his watch. “Six hours, give or take. I don’t know, I didn’t look at my watch when they first showed up. A while later, I found myself humming along thinking somebody had a radio on. I didn’t realize they were here until Carpe ghost dropped his base. Made an awful racket.”
“You look like hell, Carl. Just fill me in and you can go home early and get some sleep.”
“Well,” Carl said, “to begin with, sectors four, six, and ten are giving us massive problems, and eleven through fourteen are on the fritz, but mostly functioning.”
“Mostly functioning?”
“They go up and down. Basically, what it amounts to is that people on the space station can generally communicate with each other, it’s just that the data gets bounced around a lot. It’s like there’s some sort of interference going on.”
“Carl, you’re a genius.” Ben sat down at his station and pulled up a diagnostics menu. Carl had just put everything into perspective, because it was the perfect analogy.
Ben had spent all of this time running diagnostics on the station itself and possible outside interference. The black hole was his first choice of outside interference, but it turned out that it was unprecedented in the first place, and completely unconnected no matter how many diagnostics he ran.
But if the interference was coming from inside the station, well, maybe he could get to the bottom of it after all.
Carl got up and came over to where Ben was pulling up the information. He stood there and wobbled for a moment before he pulled up a chair and sat down.
“You really think it’s a good idea? Looking for the interference from inside the station?” Carl asked.
“Absolutely. I wish I had thought of it myself. It never occurred to me that the interference could be coming from inside the station. In fact, even if it were coming from inside, it should be having only negligible interference on our end. Since nothing in the grid ever changes inside the station. Unless-”
“Unless what?” Carl asked.
“Unless the interference was actually originating right here, from this room. Ben closed the diagnostics diagram that he was looking at and tapped out the information to bring up a different one.
“Ohmygosh. Who knew?”
“Whoa,” Carl said. “You mean to tell me that all of this time all we had to do was investigate ourselves? I never would have thought of that.”
Ben just shook his head and looked at the numbers from his new scan. “How is this possible, Carl? Have you ever seen anything like this?”
“Never,” he said. “I don’t think anybody has. And I’ve been in this business a long time.” Carl just sat there scratching his head. “I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t looking at it right now.”
“You’re right. It’s crazy,” Ben said. “Thanks so much for your help, Carl. Now all we have to do is figure out how to fix it. Let’s see.” Ben tapped his fingers on the desk.
“What if we run self-diagnostics?” Carl suggested.
Ben shook his head. “No way. These aren’t low level problems, and it’s like they’ve been disguising themselves as other things just to keep us from catching on. I think we’re going to have to find a sneakier, more foolproof way to fix it.”
Ben was excited now, though, because finally everything was making sense. He was fully awake and engaged. This was just the opportunity he had been looking for. All he had to do now was find the best way forward and maybe, just maybe, everything would finally start to calm down. Or at least that’s what he hoped.
The ghost Chemical Zombies started a new song ‘Ode to My Oracle’. It wasn’t one of Ben’s top ten favorites, but it was certainly good enough to pass the time. He started humming along as his fingers flew across the keyboard.
Finally, he found what he was looking for. An artificially intelligent computer program that had been written a long time ago to run in the background of the communications systems undetected. It was written specifically to hide itself in the background while cleaning out viruses and malware.
As far as they were from the civilized universe, though, it hadn’t been needed as they were too far out to be regularly attacked.
“Found it!” Ben said excitedly. “This might work.” Ben tapped open the program and checked the particulars, double checking the program features.
“Um, Ben?” Carl said, clearing his throat.
That’s when Ben noticed that the room had gone way too quiet. Not even the ghost band was playing. He looked up. When he did, dozens of ghosts were looming over him and Carl.
Ben was used to the ghosts hanging around, but up until now, they hadn’t paid the overworked, underpaid, and stressed out programmers any attention at all.
Why are they so close now? And why do they looked pissed? The ghosts hovered there, assuming threatening positions and facial expressions. Every piece of hair on Ben’s body stood up.
At the front of the pack of ghosts was a beautiful woman with shockingly red, flowing hair and a gold dress that looked like it came right out of Vogue Magazine.
The striking figure had murder in her eyes, which confused Ben, who figured that she was way overdressed for the dumpy communications hub. And where had she come from, anyway?
“Carl? Have you ever seen the ghosts do this before?”
Carl shook his head.
The other programmers backed up toward the door and were starting to freak out. “What do we do, Ben?” they asked. “We don’t get paid enough for this.”
Ben frowned. “Get out of here, guys. Let me and Carl handle this. We’ll text you when things calm down. Go get some coffee or a snack or something. But do me a favor. Call Crash. Call everybody. Call the head of the space station herself, Callista, if you have to, but get us some help, okay?”
They nodded and left the room quickly, leaving just Ben, Carl, and the disgruntled ghosts. The door shut behind them with a click. That’s when Ben exhaled, realizing he had been holding his breath.
Once the rest of the guys were gone, the ghosts backed up a few steps, but continued to stare at them. Ben let out a nervous chuckle. “I’m not going to lie to you, Carl, this whole thing has me freaked out.”
“You and me both, brother,” Carl said.
“You can go too, if you want,” Ben said. “I can hit the button on this program myself.”
“I’m okay. I’ll tell you what, you do what you need to do, and I’ll keep an eye on the ghosts, okay? Then we’ll leave together.”
Ben couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Carl.”
“Just go easy, okay?” Carl asked. “These ghosts look like they mean business.”
Ben exhaled and tried to focus. Just when he was sure he was starting to get a handle on the problems going on with the space station, the ghosts freaked out and everything went sideways. Story of his life.
He did happen to notice something strange. When he turned to face the ghosts instead of the computer, the ghosts backed away a few steps.
He turned his head and hands back toward the keyboard. The ghosts advanced toward him and Carl. Some now had weapons in their hand. They were all just behind their girl leader.
Ben sat there for a moment, pointing his head away from the computer, running the events of the past few minutes through his head. He was trying to get everything to make some sort of sense.
It had to be more than ironic that the ghosts chose the exact moment when they had a decent idea about fixing the space station’s communications to freak out. If the problems really were originating from here in the room, maybe these ghosts were involved somehow.
Ben continued to experiment to see what the ghosts would do. He spun back away from the computer and presented his hands to the ghosts. They visibly relaxed and stepped back. Again.
“Carl, are you seeing this?”
“I’m seeing it,” Carl said, “but I’m not believing it. It’s like they don’t want you to run that program. I don’t know why, but I’ll bet that they know on some level that it would work.”
“Why would they care?” Ben asked.
“That’s a very good question,” Carl said.
“Do you think it’s possible that these ghosts could be connected somehow, to the source of the interference?”
“That doesn’t sound possible,” Carl said, “but none of this should be possible. And for all I know, I’m hallucinating all of it. On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t listen to me at all.”
All Ben knew was that the tension in the room was palpable. These ghosts were trying to intimidate them. And it was working.
“Okay,” Ben said. He turned back toward the computer and the ghosts advanced again. He sucked in a few quick breaths and wiped his face with his sweaty hands. He wished he could run this program remotely. “I’m going to just hurry up and run the program so we can get out of this room. You ready?”
“Ready,” Carl said. “Let’s fix the space station so we can get on with our lives.”
Ben turned back to the computer, this time without paying attention to the ghosts. He had work to do. He brought up the program again, as the screen had gone into sleep mode. He tapped out the few remaining keystrokes to bring up the go command.
That’s when he heard a thud and a laser blast. Ghost laser blast? What the hell is going on?
When he turned, he saw that the thump had been Carl’s head falling onto the floor, having been sliced clean off by the hot, red-headed, girl ghost.
Girl ghost pulled the now bloody sword back again and continued to advance.
That’s when Ben abandoned the computer, ran to the door, and exited screaming like a little girl.
5
After the crazy start to her morning, Astrid had been able to fall into a fairly normal work routine. That is, right until there was a knock on her door. Then the guest rang the doorbell for good measure.
Luckily, the doorbell was custom made to play a movie theme song that she loved and could never, ever get tired of. She needed the happy doorbell to keep her in a good enough mood to not turn annoying, unwanted guests into piles of dust.
Which she could do in a pinch. But only if she had gotten enough sleep the night before, and had eaten a proper lunch. Otherwise things could turn
out all wonky, and nobody wanted that.
“Okay, Randall,” she said to the screen, looking at her office clock. Luckily their time was, in fact up, making the transition to end the video call more acceptable. “Good session. We’ll pick up here next week, okay?”
He nodded, and she pushed the button to end the call, but not before the doorbell rang again. She stopped and took a deep breath to settle, and then went to answer the door.
“Grayson,” she said upon opening the door. She did not step aside or invite him in. “To what do I owe the unannounced displeasure?” She did her best not to sneer. It wasn’t easy.
“I want a refund,” he said.
“Too bad. No refunds,” she said cheerfully. “That part was made explicitly clear in your contract. Which you signed in triplicate, remember?”
Magic was a risky business in this universe, specifically real magic. After the last incident, she had maxed out the waivers, disclaimers, and customer liability agreements.
It was now almost impossible for her to bear responsibility for anything that happened anywhere and to anybody whether they did business with her or not. Expensive enough lawyers were able to do that. Take that, universe.
Grayson took advantage somehow of a two-inch crack between the door and Astrid’s frame and barged in uninvited.
“Then I need a do-over,” he continued as he headed for her beautiful, softer than leather sofa with the authentic Jasper planet throw blanket. He sat down.
Astrid blinked several times. She had only personally sat on the new couch twice. It was for showing off and VIPs, not cheapskate, two-bit, love potion buying old coots.
“Listen, Grayson. I’m not at all sure that this business arrangement between us is going to continue to work out.”
“Look,” Grayson said, putting his feet up on the ottoman, which rocked slightly. “Oh, nice couch by the way. And aquarium. I love this place. I’m getting so many ideas for the next time I redecorate.”
Digital Ghosts: Book 2 of the Space Station At The Edge Of The Black Hole Series Page 4
