Trading Reality

by Michael Ridpath

  I felt an attack of claustrophobic panic. The terror of those minutes spent submerged in the BMW came flooding back. I flipped the glasses up, and slumped back in my chair. I could feel the sweat cold around my body. I took some deep breaths. I looked over to Rachel. ‘Bloody hell. That was just too real.’

  She smiled grimly back. ‘You wait for the next scene,’ she said. The underwater image danced on her computer screen. It didn’t look nearly as bad in two dimensions as it had done when I’d been immersed in the virtual deathtrap.

  I looked over to the others. Willie, Karen and my father were all motionless. None of them would have been able to take their headsets off, even if they had wanted to. If they had tried to say anything, we wouldn’t have heard it in the virtual world. I glanced at the TV screen. There was the same stunned stillness in Palo Alto.

  I took a deep breath, and flipped the glasses down. To my relief, we were back in the corridor, following Richard again.

  ‘So, Doogie was silenced, but your troubles weren’t over. My brother was on your trail. You tried to scare him off by hitting him over the head and sending him that warning e-mail. But it didn’t work. When the SEC gave Mark and Rachel the list it had sent me, you knew it would only be a matter of time before they discovered the link with your directorships. So you quickly organised two gorillas to get rid of them permanently.’

  Rachel and I had decided not to include our experience in the loch. The last thing we wanted to do was live through that again.

  ‘Let’s go back to my murder. I know you weren’t there then, but I thought you might like to see what it was like. This way.’

  He opened another door off the corridor, and suddenly we were in Richard’s boathouse. I saw the familiar jumble of computer equipment. It was dark, but I could hear the rhythm of the waves just outside.

  Richard was standing in front of us. ‘Someone came to see me that night. I let them in to the house and talked to them. Perhaps it was someone I knew. Perhaps it was more than one person. Perhaps they said they had a message from you.

  ‘Then I took them outside to the boathouse to show them something.’ He moved over to the spot near the door where I had found his body. He stood still for an age. ‘Come closer,’ he said. Slowly, ever so slowly, we came closer, until Richard’s face was only a foot away from our own.

  ‘Now, Walter. We die. Together this time.’

  Suddenly the image changed. There was a face in front of us, a face with no features. The face of the mysterious killer.

  The killer bent down slowly and picked up an axe. He raised it up above us, and held it there. We focused on the blade, grey but sharp with tiny wood chips clinging to its edge. Then it swung down right above our eyes. I flinched as virtual contact was made. I heard a scream from Sorenson. The axe was raised, blood dripping from the blade this time, and brought down again. Another scream.

  I flipped up the glasses and looked at the TV screen. Sorenson was clasping his headset and screaming. It jolted violently at regular intervals. We had rigged up a piston-like device which rammed into Sorenson’s forehead at every bang in the virtual world. We had set it at a level hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to knock him unconscious. It was scaring the life out of him.

  ‘He’s closed his eyes,’ said Rachel. She had installed sensors in the headset that monitored Sorenson’s eye movements. Obviously, the virtual reality effect would be lost if he kept his eyes shut.

  ‘Blast him!’ I said.

  ‘OK,’ said Rachel. I’ll turn everyone else’s earphones off. Here we go!’

  A bloodcurdling screech came from the speakers beside Rachel’s computer.

  ‘That’s on low volume,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s orders of magnitude louder in his headset.’

  The sound was the product of FairSystems’ research over the years into what noises should be avoided to prevent distress in virtual reality users. It was difficult to describe. It was high-pitched, a mixture of a baby’s yell and fingernails dragged across a blackboard.

  It went on for ten seconds and then there was silence. In Sorenson’s world, Richard would be whispering, ‘Open your eyes.’

  ‘They’re still shut. We’ll try some more,’ said Rachel, and the awful noise started again.

  The ten seconds were nearly up, and my own nerves were fraying badly, when Rachel exclaimed, ‘They’re open.’

  I flipped down the glasses again. Back into Sorenson’s world.

  Richard was standing before him, blood pouring down from a gaping hole in his forehead. ‘Now tell me Walter. Who killed me?’

  Sorenson was panting heavily. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No.’

  ‘Let’s die again, Walter.’

  Again the blade was raised above us, and again it fell. I forced myself to watch.

  ‘I’m going to increase the pressure on the piston, and turn on the sound,’ said Rachel to me. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t hear it.’

  The axe fell over and over again. Sorenson started to scream again.

  ‘Who was it, Walter?’ whispered Richard.

  ‘It wasn’t me!’ shouted Sorenson at last. ‘It wasn’t my idea! It was her fault! She shouldn’t have done it! It was stupid! Stupid!’

  There was a pause. I heard Rachel’s voice in my earphones. ‘Right, we’ve got to go live here.’

  Until then we had been able to use carefully rehearsed pre-programmed speeches for Richard, which I had recorded over the last few days. But now I would have to ask questions myself. My voice would be synthesised into an imitation of Richard’s in real time.

  ‘Who was she Walter?’ It was strange to see my words coming out of Richard’s mouth in the virtual world as I spoke them. It still seemed to me as though he was really speaking.

  No reply. Just heavy breathing as Sorenson gasped for air.

  ‘It was a woman, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I won’t tell you anything. You can put me through this as long as you like, I still won’t tell you.’

  ‘Here we go again,’ said Rachel. This time, Sorenson had pulled himself together. There were no screams, although I could hear the air hissing through his clenched teeth.

  ‘Who was she, Walter?’

  No response.

  ‘Was she your wife? A lover?’ I remembered what my father had said about Sorenson’s weakness for women. ‘Was it your mistress who murdered me?’

  ‘Go to hell!’ Sorenson muttered.

  ‘It was, wasn’t it? Your mistress. Your lover. It had to be someone who knew Richard. Who was she?’

  I thought of the women who knew Richard who might also have known Sorenson. Rachel? No, obviously not.

  Oh God. No. No!

  ‘Switch us back to the meeting!’

  Rachel did as I told her. The seven of us were sitting round the mahogany table again. In the virtual world, everyone had deadpan faces.

  I turned to Karen.

  ‘You killed him!’

  There was silence. All eyes were on her. She looked from Sorenson to me. In the virtual world it was impossible to tell what her true expression was.

  ‘I had to,’ she said at last. ‘He was going to expose Walter. It would have been the end of his career. It would have meant there was no future for us.’

  ‘But how could you do it?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill him. I meant to talk him out of going to the SEC. But he wouldn’t listen. And the axe was right there. It was the only way to keep him quiet.’

  I was speechless. My brain was a jumble of unconnected thoughts. So her lover wasn’t Bob Forrester at all; it was Sorenson. Karen had killed my brother. And even after that we had slept together, made love. It was revolting. I couldn’t believe it. It was too horrible to believe.

  I dimly heard Rachel’s voice as she took over. ‘And what about Doogie? And Mark and me?’

  ‘I killed Doogie. And I arranged for those men to kill you and Mark. Walter knew nothing about it. Like he said, it was all my idea.’

  ‘Did yo
u know anything about this, Walter?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything without a lawyer,’ Sorenson replied flatly.

  ‘It was worth it,’ Karen said. ‘It was worth it for you, Walter. Please remember that.’

  The anger boiled up inside me. It came from nowhere. At one moment I was stunned, at the next every sinew of my body was filled with fury.

  ‘You bitch!’ I screamed, and pulled off my virtual glasses. I lunged at Karen, her face hidden behind the headset.

  Rachel grabbed my arm and hung on. ‘No Mark! Leave her! The police will take care of her!’

  I pulled up short. I couldn’t see Karen’s eyes under the helmet. But I could see her mouth. She was smiling.

  29

  We stood outside the small terraced house in Jericho, a former working-class district of Oxford now taken over by students and younger dons. I was nervous. So was Rachel. I rang the bell.

  Frances answered. ‘Hi, come in.’

  My stepmother was dark-haired and pretty, and only a few years older than me. It was a ridiculous situation.

  My father was overjoyed to see us, and grinned broadly as I introduced Rachel. ‘What will you have to drink?’

  Rachel, Frances and I opted for beers, whilst my father had the inevitable dry sherry. He had an image to maintain. I thought he looked much better than when I had spoken to him in the King’s Arms. Not so worn, not so dispirited.

  Frances had prepared a traditional Sunday lunch of roast lamb. I realised it was years since I had had one, and I was looking forward to it.

  ‘So, you decided not to stay on as MD of FairSystems?’ said my father, as he cut into the meat.

  ‘I did my best in a crisis, but I’m sure Rachel will do a much better job than I ever could. Besides, trading is in my blood.’ I had persuaded her that it was something she not only could do, but should do. The idea was growing on her.

  ‘And are you staying in the City?’

  ‘No,’ I smiled. ‘I’ve just accepted a job with Hunter Merchant. They’re a fund management firm in Edinburgh. It’s a lot less money, but they have an excellent reputation. And it will be good to live in Scotland. They’ll let me spend a couple of days a month at FairSystems. It should work out well.’ I smiled at Rachel. I had had enough of Edinburgh airport. I didn’t think much of the idea of weekend commuting.

  ‘How are the police getting on with the prosecution?’ my father asked.

  ‘It’s not easy,’ I said. ‘Sorenson is keeping quiet, except to deny everything. Karen says she was responsible for the whole thing.’

  ‘What do you think happened?’ asked Frances.

  ‘I can piece most of it together. Sorenson met Karen several years ago, probably at one of the Harrison Brothers conferences. Sorenson runs American companies, Karen sells their stock, so it wasn’t really surprising that they should meet. Then he chucked her, she cracked up, and I picked up the pieces.

  ‘Sorenson got into the insider trading game through lack of money. He had an expensive lifestyle, and most of his wealth was tied up in the shares of Softouch, which went bust. He met Hartman, and started giving him inside information. It was easy money. Then Richard got suspicious about FairSystems’ stock, and asked Karen and me to help him find out what was going on. Karen guessed Sorenson was involved, and contacted him to warn him. She had seen him at BGL’s party just a few days before. It must have been about then that their affair restarted.’

  I could hear the bitterness creeping into my voice. I remembered Karen’s sudden trips to Paris and Amsterdam, her evenings spent entertaining clients. ‘Karen fell for him again. When Richard threatened to expose Sorenson, she was desperate. She couldn’t face the thought of losing him once more. So she flew up to Scotland to talk Richard out of it, and when he refused, she killed him.

  ‘She must have told Sorenson what she had done. She says she was proud of it; it was a way for her to show him how much she loved him.’ I shuddered. Tm sure Sorenson had no idea what Karen was going to do. Neither did she, probably. But once Richard was dead, they were both deeply involved. They had to kill Doogie and try to kill Rachel and me to cover their tracks.’ And all the time she’d kept up the pretence of our relationship. So as not to raise suspicions, I supposed. And to keep an eye on me. My skin crawled to think of it.

  ‘It must have been Sorenson who murdered Doogie,’ I continued. ‘After all, Karen was still in my flat, but he would just have had time to go up to Scotland. Either one of them could have hired those men to kill us.’

  ‘I still can’t believe Walter could get himself involved in something like this,’ said my father. ‘He was always so straight, so above board.’

  ‘I think that was exactly the reputation he was trying to protect,’ I said. ‘If he had been exposed insider dealing, it would have ruined him.’

  Dad nodded. ‘I can see that. He was always proud of his achievements. But to kill?’

  ‘Once Karen had killed Richard, it probably seemed to him that he had no other option. And he’s certainly a man of action.’

  ‘She must have been a seriously mixed up woman.’

  ‘She was,’ I said. ‘More than I could ever guess.’

  I sighed. ‘I saw her mother last week. She called me a while ago saying she was worried about Karen, but I ignored her. I had other things to think about. Anyway, she told me that Karen’s breakdown when her father left was even more serious than I realised. Apparently the “other woman” ’s house was burned down. Karen was ruled out as the arsonist, but only because her mother covered for her. When Karen stayed with her the night after Richard was murdered, she was in a terrible state. Although Daphne wouldn’t admit it, I think she suspected her daughter had killed Richard.’

  A thought struck me. ‘Did you guess something, Rachel? Is that why you insisted Karen should be at the demonstration?’

  Rachel smiled. ‘It was no more than a guess. Just intuition, really. I had no evidence to back it up, so I thought it best not to tell you, just in case I was wrong. But I was pretty sure that if Karen was there, we would find out if she were involved or not.’

  All three of them were looking at me: Frances, my father and Rachel. I answered the unspoken question. ‘I just felt sorry for her,’ I said. ‘I knew she’d had a rough time, and that vulnerability made her more attractive, made me feel I could be useful.’

  ‘I hope you’re not going to burn down our house,’ said Frances.

  ‘No.’ I smiled at her, and then at my father. ‘No, I won’t do that.’

  The German took off his virtual glasses and leaned back in his chair. ‘Wonderful. This is truly amazing,’ he said, staring at the Jenson Computer in front of him. I had just run him through ‘Virtual Building’, a program that simulated all the details of an office block design.

  ‘You are sure that I can put all my architects on the same network so that they can all work on the same design?’

  ‘Quite sure. The program will work with all the major networking software. Your people will be able to walk around and work in the same virtual building, or they can try out their own variations.’

  ‘And what about all the software we have on our PCs at the moment? Will all that run on this machine?’

  ‘Anything that will run on an IBM PC with a Pentium chip will run on this,’ I assured him. ‘And you will be able to access the program directly from Windows. In time, your customers will be able to view your designs through their own computers.’

  The man stood up. He worked for one of the largest firms of architects in Germany, and he was obviously impressed.

  He shook my hand. ‘Very interesting, Mr Fairfax. When will the system be available?’

  ‘September,’ I said. ‘Shall we get in touch with you then?’

  ‘Please do.’ He handed me his card. As he walked away from the stand, he kept looking back over his shoulder at the system.

  ‘Will he buy?’

  I turned to see Rachel at my shoulder.

  ‘O
h yes, he’ll buy,’ I answered.

  ‘Come on, let’s get out of here. I need a ciggy badly.’

  I hesitated. The stand was crowded with eager onlookers, many of them potential buyers.

  ‘Hey, we’ve been at this for four hours, we deserve a break.’ She took my arm and pulled me away from the stand.

  We pushed through the crowded exhibition centre, making our way towards the exit signs. Huge banners hung down from the ceiling proclaiming SIGGRAPH. SIGGRAPH was the major exhibition in the virtual reality year, and this year’s in Orlando was the biggest yet. Jenson had spared no expense on the joint FairSystems/Jenson stand, and it was the highlight of the show. There were some other products that could do as much as ours, but none that was anywhere near as cheap. And none that would be bundled up in every copy of Windows sold. We really would bring VR to the masses.

  It was the third day of the exhibition. Project Platform, renamed ‘VR Master’, had been announced on the first day and had caused an immediate stir. FairSystems’ shares were already up to eighteen dollars and were still rising. Orders were flooding in, and the assembly lines in Jenson’s Palo Alto factory were rolling. Richard’s dream was becoming reality.

  We emerged from the huge, air-conditioned hall into the early afternoon brightness. It was hot and clammy, but Rachel didn’t care. She reached for a cigarette and took a long drag. We sat on the steps just outside the hall. People milled about, moving slowly in the heavy July heat. Twenty yards away, a group of a dozen or so were eating sandwiches, sprawled on a square of freshly sprinkled grass.

  I glanced at Rachel’s face. I knew she hadn’t slept very much over the past week, but you couldn’t tell. Her dark eyes still glowed brightly under her tousled hair. She saw me watching her and smiled, putting her arm round me. We sat in silence for a minute or two.

  It was all coming together. Jenson was proving to be an energetic ally, and had pushed strongly for Rachel to take the role of managing director of FairSystems. I was happy to step back and watch her, and help out where I could. The bond markets beckoned. Once you’re hooked, it’s difficult to give up.