Hunters & Collectors

by M. Suddain

  ‘I think we’ve earned one. An explanation for your behaviour downstairs, at least.’

  Three strong drinks and I was finally brave enough.

  ‘Nothing…’ She gazed at me as she sliced the card in two, ‘… to report.’

  I backed off. I took her a fresh drink, placed it next to the other full ones. I’d keep stacking them beside her. Fuck her. I made hers bright green, just to please her. ‘Gladys!’ She looked up slowly. Not happy.

  ‘What the fuck do you want me to say, Jonathan? You got what you wanted. You didn’t dream it after all. The stars are out, the night is magic, the guests are so happy they’re losing their motherfucking heads.’ Heads. Yes. There had been a large ‘coconut shy’ arrangement not far from the elevators. The sheet hadn’t quite obscured it. The killer picked up her first drink with a hand so steady the ice hardly tinkled, and drained it. Then the next. The stars are out? We are miles under the ocean, locked in an internal room. We have a kind of window. When I threw back the curtains I found only my own face reflected. Behind the glass, an alcove: rocks, a small waterfall, butterflies and flowering plants. But the butterflies were sleeping, the lights were turned off, all was still in paradise.

  ‘I knew this would happen.’ I said it to myself, really, but …

  ‘What? What did you know would happen?’

  ‘Something. I knew something would happen if …’

  ‘If what, John?’

  ‘Nothing. Let’s forget.’

  But we can’t forget. I’d like to forget it all, but my pen keeps moving. I’ll fill this horsy journal in an hour if I keep going. My last one. And then where will I be? But I keep going. Pen keeps running towards the margin. Pen, who still has teeth marks from when I clamped down on it while an elderly sponge diver pulled barbed cactus spikes from my torso and sucked out the poison with her toothless mouth. What happens when its ink is spent? Don’t like to think about it. I wonder how deep in the ocean we are, how many million pounds of pressure bear down on us.

  ‘Are you angry with me because you had to kill that boy?’ I said as I gazed into the butterfly alcove.

  ‘I didn’t kill any boy, John.’

  ‘You did. We all saw it. Did we not see how you spiked poor Franz?’

  ‘Nothing here is real, John.’

  ‘Nothing? How could nothing be real? Something has to be real.’

  ‘Holograms, Boss. Like the mascots they had at the Fair.’

  ‘They’re not holograms, Daniel.’

  ‘You didn’t know, Boss?’

  ‘What are you talking about, holograms?’

  ‘They’re not holograms.’

  ‘See, Beast. They’re not holograms.’

  Beast shrugged. ‘You didn’t know the staff were holograms?’

  ‘They’re not fucking holograms, Daniel. They’re VIPs.’

  I shrugged helplessly.

  ‘Volumetric Interstitial Projections,’ said Beast with a patronising squint. ‘Holograms, basically. I’ve heard about them, and I wasn’t even at the Fair.’

  ‘Fucking tell me about it.’

  VIPs. I thought back. I do remember someone mentioning something at the Fair. There were whispers that some hotels, schools, prisons, airports, had been experimenting with artificial staffing solutions.14 I’d seen a few holographic mascots at the Fair. But they were nothing like this. They were crude, misty cartoon shapes. But the ones at the Empyrean are as real as life.

  ‘His head sure felt real,’ said G as she dreamily caressed the tip of her hunting knife with her finger. ‘As real as any time I’ve done it.’

  ‘Right. And exactly how many times have you rammed a sharpened mop handle through a boy’s head?’

  She shrugged. ‘Once or twice. I felt gristle.’

  ‘Well, OK, so the staff are something like gristly holograms. So we turn off the power and reset the system. Like the stall manager at the Fair did when the children started to teach his mascots to shout suggestive things at women.’

  (‘Hey, sex-pants, you smell good! Come here and let me smell your sex-basement!’ It was actually pretty funny. Maybe my highlight of the whole sorry visit.)

  ‘They aren’t lamps, Jonathan. This is a complex system. They’ll have redundancies. It’s no wonder they only house ten thousand guests. Two-thirds of this place must be hardware.’

  Fucking technology. You can go fifteen miles or more below the surface of the ocean and still not escape it. ‘Fine, they’re complicated lamps. But you beat them, Gladys. They can’t kill you with sharpened sticks. You have guns, teensy grenades…’ I let my fingers wiggle in the air, ‘… and such.’

  She looked at me with maximum contempt. ‘I didn’t beat them. The boy with the mop was probably a test, see what we’re made of. Or they wanted us to cause a scene so they could have a reason to keep us from leaving. Or that mop boy just felt like killing Daniel. But if they want us dead, they’ll do it, and we won’t even see it coming.’

  ‘So that man at the door to 114 was –’

  ‘A replication, yes.’

  Astonishing. It suddenly made sense: why a man who appeared to be a guest was outside his room shouting, ‘Honey, please. It was all a big misunderstanding. It’s over now!’ when it definitely, categorically wasn’t. It seems the establishment is still trying to lure some stubborn guests from their hiding places and sanctuaries, and they’re using fabrications of loved ones to do it. The bride wouldn’t see the cleaver in her husband’s hand until she opened the door. At another room a dissimulation of a beloved dog was yapping. Outside room 128 a small girl was calling:

  ‘Mother! Please open the door, I’m scared!’

  It was like walking dimly lit streets on Hallow’s Eve, seeing costumed horrors knocking on doors stained with fake blood. But the costumes seemed as real as life, and the blood most certainly was.

  ‘But why would they want to kill all the guests, Gladys? That isn’t normal.’

  The girl shrugged again. ‘I have no idea. This is not a normal hotel. It’s probably not a hotel at all. They have a simulated staffing system which doubles as a security shield. It’s decades ahead of any government or military sims I’ve seen. And it isn’t happy. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s been hacked. Maybe it’s on its monthly. But I definitely didn’t beat it. That’s my report. That’s all I can tell you. I can’t tell you your status, I can’t tell you whether or not you’ll live through the night, I can only tell you that I could be telling you this in the cargo-pod if you’d listened to me. But you didn’t. As usual. So here we are. And your exit options are probably about the same as they were on the ferry.’

  Through a small hole without my body. I turned back to my reflection in the glass.

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘No idea. Call your mother, tell her you could be joining her for dinner.’

  Dinner with Esmeralda in the afterlife. Not a happy prospect. To be honest, I think I’d rather be here.

  ‘Did you see that little girl?’ Woodbine said it quietly, and we both turned to look at him. ‘They made a wee girl out of light and used her to call to her mother.’

  Yes, I remember the little girl all right. Room 128, the last intersection before we reached the Meridian. She wore a violet dress. She called, in a sing-song voice through the satin-painted door with the silver number, 128:

  ‘Mummy! Please open the door … I’m all alone and I’m afraid!’

  There was a small pack of porters waiting behind her, arranged like Harvest singers, each clutching real weapons in their superficial hands, ready to pounce the second the girl’s mother opened the door. Did they even notice us? The small girl did. She turned to watch us hurry past.

  ‘Mummy, please!’

  Follow the cart and you’ll be fine. It’s a Winchester. It’s a reliable brand. Just follow the cart and all will be merry.

  She turned her head, slowly raised her small hand in a gesture of greeting, like some alien visitor arriving from another part of th
e universe. There were tears to choke her voice, but not her face, and she never stopped her singing while she did:

  ‘I’m scared, open the door!

  ‘It’s dark out here and I want to come in!’

  It’s understandable that Beast would hold on to that moment.

  And I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, Colette, except that I have to. Someone has to be a witness to this. Whatever this is.

  There was another long silence. By now I was correctly drunk, but with all that had happened I felt no happiness.

  ‘Look, I know what you’re both thinking: that this is all my fault. Don’t leap to deny it.’ They didn’t. ‘But I didn’t kill those people. And unless we want to join them we need to work together. We follow their instructions to the letter. We cooperate with this little investigation of theirs. We smooth the waters. We might as well make the best of this. I have my meal, I make my notes, and we leave. Then we cash in. Something has to come from this. We’ll be laughing about it when we’re back on dry land and squalid with cash. Can you do this, Gladys? Can I rely on you? Can we get through the next few nights without you murdering anyone else?’

  Her expression told me that her main challenge would be to get through the next few nights without murdering me.

  There doesn’t seem to be anything left to say now. Impossible beings made of light. Not holograms, but something better. Can’t sleep, but have no reading material. Just Doctor Difflaydermaus’s book, which … kill me. Just shoot me in the face right now. I’ve thrown the latest copy of his book in the wastebasket in my room, but I can still feel that chubby, bearded face gazing coyly at me from the cover. If I sleep tonight he’ll try to talk to me, I know it. So I won’t sleep. And if I do, I’ll wear protection.

  Have read the induction literature. Have read the safety cards. There are systems in these rooms designed – by one Doctor Rubin Difflaydermaus,15 BBDSM, no less – to scan a guest’s biochemistry and neurophysiology, then produce bespoke subsonic waves to help them sleep. Not regular subsonic waves, Colette. Bespoke. Yet I don’t even feel the temptation to sleep. Perhaps my wave-producing system has malfunctioned, just like the staffing system appears to have. Or perhaps it’s because I can hear her silently judging me. Through the walls. Material which will not admit the agitato of a still-unfolding massacre can somehow conduct the soft, precise clicks of Gladys dismantling her guns, and in the rhythm and restrained force of those clicks is Judgement.

  14 ‘… Capitalising on recent advancements in quantum interactions, super-computing and high-spec volumetric projectography, we have been able to create models for network-driven “clouds” of semi-sentient servants who could exploit indeterminancy states to such a degree that they could have a cup of tea ready for you the moment you realised you desired one.’

  15 ‘If I put my mind in your body, who am I? If I make a precise duplicate of myself, with my DNA, my memories, do we each have a copy of our soul? And when we die, will we both be allowed into the next world?’

  NOTES ON DOCTOR RUBIN DIFFLAYDERMAUS, BBDSM

  ‘Jonathan … Jonathan, it’s me.’

  I opened my eyes. There was a large, black telephone set on my bedside table. It hadn’t been there earlier. Fuck. I’d fallen asleep. I was in the monster’s domain.

  ‘Jonathan. It’s Doctor Rubin. Hellooooooooooo! Wake up and sleep. I need to talk to you, hey?’

  His voice is husky and melodic – like a misplayed flute. The kind of voice that gets inside your head. I got up and went out to check the main room. Everything was quiet. The room was bathed in moonlight. Gladys was sleeping upright in the chair at the table where I’d left her. She was dressed in a genuine vintage Gavage, with flowers woven through her hair, and she was murmuring softly to herself. There was an old man in an armchair by the butterfly window, quietly reading to himself while great purple dragonflies buzzed round his head.

  ‘The word you’re looking for is solodium,’ the old man spoke. ‘The sense of loneliness you feel when you see someone else is happy in their solitude.’

  ‘You don’t want to be out here long, Jonathan,’ said Gladys. ‘Go see Sam the elevator man, he’ll show you how to get to my health and wellness suite.’

  Closed the door to my room and put a chair beneath the handle. It’s best, I’d found, during these dream invasions, to take all possible precautions, and to wear protection. I went to the small leather bag I always carry with me when I sleep, found the small plastic packet. I tore it open and pressed the plugs into my ears. I got back into bed and tried to rest. He’d managed to get me to sleep, yes. But he couldn’t make me talk to him.

  ‘Come on, Jonathan, pick up. Your earplugs won’t work here. I’m inside you?’

  Fucking hell.

  ‘I promise we don’t have to talk about anything you’re not comfortable with. We don’t have to talk about Nanše, or your mother. Or clowns, ha ha! … Although I do have some insights to share on clowns. I think it all comes down to a desire you have to wear your mother’s make-up. Hey?’

  I wouldn’t bite.

  ‘Are you there?’

  Nope.

  ‘Anyways. All I wanted was, yes? Just to get your angle on what happened with Franz. Because Management wants to unpack it. Yes? Our Master is very concerned. And also I need to ask you a quick couple o’ questions about Ms Green before I have my first session with her later.’

  I picked up. ‘Sorry, what did you just say?’

  ‘Take your earplugs out so I can hear you better, Jonathan.’

  ‘That doesn’t make … fine, whatever.’ I took my plugs out. ‘What’s this about seeing Gladys?’

  ‘It’s so good to hear your voice, Jonathan. Wow. It feels like you’ve been avoiding me. How are you? Are the staff looking after you?’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘I said, are the staff looking after you?’

  ‘One more time.’

  ‘Jonathan.’

  ‘No, Rubin. No, thankfully the staff are keeping their distance. This is completely fucking outrageous. We’re lost for words. My agent hasn’t blinked since we got here.’

  ‘Heh. They are a wilful bunch of sprites, aren’t they? Ripe with energy.’

  ‘Is this a joke, Doctor? Am I fucking dreaming?’

  ‘Yes, Jonathan. You’re literally dreaming. You’re in a hyperlucid sleep-state of my making? I induce it through the ventilation systems?’

  ‘I come here in good faith, at your request, to have my meal. Instead I find the halls have been painted in blood by these holograms. I seriously don’t understand any of this.’

  ‘They’re not holograms.’

  ‘Don’t you fucking start.’

  ‘They are each a unique emanation created by synthetically aligned nano-ethers perceived through a transdimensional membrane. Yes?’

  ‘Fucking hell. Can we –’

  ‘Technically, much of what you’re perceiving when you go about our establishment is occurring in an entirely separate dimension. But “dimension” is a flawed term.’ He had a knack of speaking whole paragraphs in monotone, and inflecting others with annoying rising terminals. ‘In fact the entire idea of visual perception is problematic? You’re aware, yes, that what you’re perceiving when you look at an object has only a limited communion with the actual object? … Well, there is the “thing” as you perceive it, and then there is the “thing” as it actually is?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ The fuck was he talking about?

  ‘Much of what you seem to perceive here, at our hotel, is not even being transmitted through your eyes, ears, nose and skin at all. Much of it is being sent directly to the areas of your brain which deal with perception, yes? Perhaps it’s helpful to you to imagine yourself floating in warm water. Hey?’

  ‘Why warm?’

  ‘Because it helps relax you? I want you to relax? And then to imagine drops of ink falling into the water. Only the ink has not been literally dropped into the water, yes?’

  ‘Of co
urse not, that would be fucking ridiculous.’

  ‘It’s more the case that the “water” has been dropped around the “ink”? In fact, the “ink” exists as a quasi-sentient extrapolation of a fictional time/space envelope.’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘You did ask about this.’

  ‘No, I said I didn’t understand it.’

  Some context, Colette. I met Doctor Rubin in the Empyrean’s Grand Ballroom, back when I was still in Coma. At first I thought I was in a temple. The whole place was azure, and the smell of burning incense stung my nose. The furniture from a physician’s office had been arranged in the centre of the ballroom. There was a large desk, and a canoe sofa, and a standing lamp, and every piece of furniture was azure. A quivering blob sat on a meditation pad near a set of tall bookshelves. For some reason I couldn’t hold an image of him in my head. He shook and wobbled, evading my sight like a half-formed spirit buffeted by a wind. The shape I would come to know as Doctor Difflaydermaus said: ‘Jonathan, try to breathe. Can I call you Jonathan? Let’s start again. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to. Please, sit down. Or lie? Share my meditation pad if you like. I was out of line. I can tell you don’t want to talk about what you’ve gone through over the past few weeks.’

  ‘Fuck no.’

  ‘Then we won’t. Not unless you want to?’

  ‘I don’t’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘Tell me who you are and what you want.’

  ‘OK. I’m Doctor Rubin, like I said? You can call me Rubin. Or Doctor Rubin? I’m easy? What I do, technically, is I’m a physician? But my role is complicated? Specifically I’m the physician at a hotel. Hotel Grand Skies?’

  ‘What? What did you just say? Say that again.’

  ‘Please, sit down. Try to relax. Recline if you like. How did your robe get all shredded?’

  ‘Cockfight. So this is about my investigations?’

  ‘I’m not familiar with these investigations, Jonathan. Please tell me about them if you think they’re relevant?’

  Now I was sorry I’d brought it up. ‘Someone approached me because they heard your hotel was back in business. I decided to try to find it. I only had one photo, but I lost it when I loaned it to a heavily pregnant lady on a train. It’s a long story.’