The Jennifer Morgue

by Charles Stross

  “Ah, but this is necessary to understand the process-oriented quality infrastructure, Robert.” She looks down her nose at me over her bifocals and brandishes a scarily thick sheaf of papers. “I have here the fully documented procurement analysis for the system!” The only inflection in her voice is on the last word, making a sort of semantic hiccup out of it. She sounds like a badly programmed speech synthesizer.

  “Yes, but what does it do?” Ramona butts in, leaning forwards. It’s the first thing she’s said since I introduced her, and suddenly she’s the focus of attention again. “I’m sorry if this is all understood by everybody present, but . . .” she trails off.

  Sophie pauses for a few seconds, like a robot receiving new instructions. “If you will with me bear, I shall explain it. The contractors a presentation have prepared, to be played after lunch.” Oops, I think, visions of the usual postprandial siesta torture running through my head. Dim the lights, turn the heating up, then get some bastard in a suit to stand up and drone through a PowerPoint presentation—have I said how much I hate PowerPoint?—while you try to stay awake. Then I blink and notice Ramona’s sidelong glance. Oops again. What’s going on?

  Lunch arrives mercifully soon, in the form of a trolley parked outside the conference suite door, laden with sandwiches and slices of ham. Sophie accepts the enforced pause with relatively good grace, and we all stand up and head for the buffet, except Ramona. While I’m stuffing my face on tuna and cucumber I catch Franz looking concerned. “Are you hungry?” he asks her quietly.

  Ramona smiles at him, turning on the charm. “I’m on a special diet.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  She beams up at him: “That’s all right, I had a heavy meal last night.”

  ★★Don’t,★★ I warn her silently, and she flashes a scowl at me.

  ★★You’re no fun, monkey-boy.★★

  Eventually we go back to the table. Anna fidgets with the remote control to the blinds until she figures out how to block off the early afternoon sunlight. “Very good!” she says approvingly. “Sophie, if you will continue?”

  “Danke.” Sophie fidgets with her laptop and the projector cable. “Ah, gut. Here we go, very soon . . .”

  There is something about PowerPoint presentations that sends people to sleep. It’s particularly effective after lunch, and Sophie doesn’t have the personal presence to get past the soothing wash of pastel colors and flashy dissolves and actually make us pay attention. I lean back and watch tiredly. TLA GmBH is a subsidiary of TLA Systems Corporation, of Ellis Billington. They’re the guys who do for the Black Chamber what QinetiQ does—or used to do—for the UK’s Ministry of Defense. This integrated system we’re watching a promo video for is basically just a tarted-up-for-export—meaning, it speaks Spanish, French, and German technobabble—version of a big custom program they wrote for Ramona’s faceless employers. So what’s Ramona doing here? I wonder. They must already know all this. Wake up, Bob! I’ve got a stomach full of tuna mayo and smoked salmon on rye, and it feels like it weighs a quarter of a ton. The sunlight slanting through the half-drawn blinds warms the back of my hands where they lie limply on the tabletop. Asset-management software is so not my favorite afternoon topic of conversation. Bob, pay attention at the back! Ramona shouldn’t be here, I think fuzzily. Why is she here? Is it something to do with Billington’s software?

  ★★Bob! Pay attention right now!★★

  I jolt upright in my seat as if someone’s stuck a cattle prod up my rear. The sharp censorious voice in my head is Ramona’s. I glance along the table but everybody else is nodding or dozing or snoozing in tune to Sophie’s repetitive cadence—except Ramona, who catches my eye. She’s alert, ready and waiting for something.

  ★★What’s going on?★★ I ask her.

  ★★We’re at slide twenty-four,★★ she tells me. ★★What-ever happens next, it happens between numbers twenty-six and twenty-eight.★★

  ★★What ...?★★

  ★★We’re not omniscient, Bob. We just caught wind of—aha, twenty-five coming up.★★

  I glance at the end of the table. Sophie stands next to the projector and her laptop, swaying slightly like a puppet in the grip of an invisible force. “. . . The four-year rolling balance of assets represents a best-of-breed optimization for control of procurement processes and the additional neural network intermediated Bayesian maintenance workload prediction module will allow you to control your inventory of hosts and project a stable cash flow . . .” My guts clench. A whole lot of things suddenly come clear: The bastards are trying to brainwash the committee!

  It’s PowerPoint, of course. A hypnotic slide into a bulleted list of total cost of ownership savings and a pie chart with a neat lime-green slice taken out of it—ooh look, it’s three dimensional; it’s also a bar graph with the height of the slices denoting some other parameter—and a pale background of yellow lines on white that looks a little like the TLA logo we began the slide show with: an eye floating in a tetrahedral Escher paradox, and a diagram a little bit like whatever Ramona was sketching on her notepad—I grab my tablet PC and poke the power button, trying to keep my hands from shaking.

  Screen saver. Screen saver. I eject the pen and hastily hit on the control panel to bring up the screen saver. The dream catcher routine I had running last night is all I can think of right now. I set it running then slide the tablet face-up, with the hypnotic blur of purple lines cycling across it, on the conference table so that it lies directly between me and the projection screen.

  ★★Good move, monkey-boy.★★

  Franz is leaning back in his chair beside me. His eyes are closed and there’s a fine thread of spittle dangling from one side of his mouth. François is face down on the mat, snoring, and Anna is frozen, glassy-eyed, at the foot of the table, her open eyes fixed unseeing on the projector screen. I take care not to look at it directly.

  ★★What’s it meant to be doing?★★ I ask Ramona.

  ★★That’s what we’re here to find out. Nobody who’s been in one of these sales sessions before has come out in any state to tell us.★★

  ★★What? You mean they were killed?★★

  ★★No, they just insisted on buying TLA products. Oh, and they’d had their souls eaten.★★

  ★★What would you know about that?★★

  ★★They don’t taste the same. Shut up and get ready to yank the projector cable when I give the word, okay?★★

  Sophie hits the mouse button again and the light in the room changes subtly, signaling a dissolve from one frame to another. Her voice mutates, morphs and deepens, taking on a vaguely familiar cadence. “Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of any contradictory and confusing truths . . .”

  The dream catcher in front of me is going crazy. ★★I’ve seen that before. It’s the Apple 1984 ad, the one they commissioned Ridley Scott to direct for the launch of the Macintosh computer. The most expensive ad in the entire history of selling beige boxes to puzzled posers. What the hell are they doing with that?★★

  ★★Law of contagion.★★ Ramona sounds tense. ★★Very strong imagery of conformity versus mold-breaking, concealing conformity disguised as mold-breaking. Ever wondered why Mac users are so glassy-eyed about their boxes? This is slide twenty-six; okay, we’ve got about ten seconds to go ... ★★

  I briefly debate standing up right there and yanking the power cable. I’ve seen the original ad so many times I don’t need to look at the screen to follow it; it’s famous throughout the computer industry. “Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on Earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!”

  Seconds to go. The female runner races towards the
huge screen in front of the arena, clutching a sledge hammer, poised to hurl it through Big Brother’s face—and I know exactly what’s going to happen, what those shards of glass are going to morph into with the next dissolve as I take my tablet by both sides (careful to keep my hands from touching the toughened glass screen cover) and pick it up, flipping it over as the crescendo builds towards what would be, in the real advertisement, the announcement of a revolutionary new type of computer—

  ★★Ready—★★

  The light flickers and something that feels like an out-of-control truck punches into the screen of the tablet PC as I hold it between my face and the projection screen. It’s not a physical force, but it might as well be from the acrid smoke spewing from the vents under my fingertips and the way the battery compartment begins to glow.

  ★★Go!★★

  I drop the PC, cover my eyes with one hand, and dive for where the back of the projector used to be. I flop on my belly halfway across the table, flailing around until I catch a bunch of wires and yank hard, pulling and tearing at them, too frightened to open my eyes and see which ones I’ve got hold of. Someone is screaming and someone else is crying behind me, emitting incoherent moans like an animal in pain. Then someone punches me in the ribs.

  I open my eyes. The projector’s out and Ramona is sitting on top of Sophie from the Faust Force, or the thing that’s animating Sophie’s body, methodically whacking her head on the floor. Then I realize that the pain in my side is Ramona’s: Sophie is fighting back. I roll over and find myself facing Anna. Her face hangs like a loose mask and her eyes glow faintly in the twilight that the almost-closed blinds allow into the room. I scrabble desperately, grab the edge of the table, and pull myself over it into her lap. She grabs for my head, but whatever’s inside her isn’t very good at controlling a human body and I roll again, drop arse-first onto the floor (my coccyx will tell me about it tomorrow), and scramble to my feet.

  The previously orderly meeting is dissolving into the kind of carnage that can only ensue when most of the members of an international joint-liaison committee turn into brain-eating zombies. Luckily they’re not Sam Raimi zombies, they’re just midlevel bureaucrats whose cerebral cortices have been abruptly wiped in the presence of a Dho-Na summoning geometry (in this case, embedded in the dissolve between two PowerPoint slides), allowing some random extradimensional gibberers to move in. Half of them can’t even stand up, and those who can aren’t very effective yet.

  ★★Have you got her?★★ I ask Ramona, working my way past Anna (who is currently keeping François occupied by chewing on his left hand) and nearly tripping over the wreckage of my tablet PC.

  ★★She’s fighting back!★★ A stray, booted foot lashes out at me and now I succeed in falling over, on top of Sophie as luck would have it. Sophie looks up at me with blank eyes and makes a keening noise like a cat that wants to break a furry critter’s neck.

  ★★Well fucking do something!★★ I yell.

  ★★Okay.★★ Sophie jerks underneath me and tries to sink her teeth into my arm. But Ramona’s ready with a springloaded syringe and nails her right through the shoulder. ★★You’ll need to open the wards so we can get out.★★

  ★★I’m going to—★★ Oh, right. Ramona’s a guest. I lurch upright and lunge for the blotter in front of Anna’s seat, grab at her gavel, and rap it on the table. “As the last quorate member standing I hereby unanimously promote myself to Chair and declare this session closed.” Five heads, their eyes swimming with luminous green worms, turn to face me. “School’s out.” I race for the door, piling into Ramona as I yank the handle open. ★★Got her?★★

  ★★Yes. Grab her other arm and move!★★

  Sophie is kicking and writhing wordlessly but Ramona and I drag her through the doorway and I yank it shut behind us. The latch clicks, and Sophie goes limp.

  ★★Hey.★★ I look sideways. ★★What’s—★★

  Ramona lets go of her other arm and I stagger. ★★Well isn’t that a surprise,★★ she comments, looking down at Sophie, who sprawls on the hotel carpet in front of the door. ★★She’s dead, Jim.★★

  ★★Bob,★★ I correct automatically. ★★What do you mean, she’s dead?★★

  ★★Poison-pill programming, I think.★★

  I lean against the wall, dizzy and nauseated. ★★We’ve got to go back! The others are still in there. Can we break it? The control link, I mean. If it’s just a transient override—★★

  Ramona winces and stares at me. ★★Will you stop that? It’s not a transient and there’s nothing we can do for them.★★

  ★★But she’s dead! We’ve got to do something! And they’re—★★

  ★★They’re dead, too.★★ Ramona stares at me in obvious concern. ★★Did you hit your head or something? No, I’d have felt that. You’re squeamish, aren’t you?★★

  ★★We could have saved them! You knew what was going to happen! You could have warned us! If you hadn’t been so fucking curious to know what was buried in the presentation—shit, why didn’t you just snarf a copy and edit it yourself? This isn’t the first time it’s happened, is it?★★

  She lets me rant for a minute or so, until I run down. ★★Bob, Bob. This is the first time this has happened. At least, the first time anyone’s gotten out of one of these presentations alive.★★

  ★★Jesus. Then why do you keep having them?★★ I realize I’m waving my arms around but I’m too upset to stop. I have a terrible feeling that if I’d just given in to my first impulse to yank the cord on the projector—★★It’s murder! Letting it go ahead like that—★★

  ★★We don’t. My—department—doesn’t. TLA is selling hard outside the US, Bob. They sell in places like Malaysia or Kazakhstan or Peru, and in places that aren’t quite on the map, if you follow me. We’ve heard rumors about this. We’ve seen some of the . . . fallout. But this is the first time we’ve gotten in on the ground floor. Sophie Frank was fingered by your people, if you must know. Your Andy Newstrom raised the flag. She’s been behaving oddly for the past couple of months. You were sent because, unlike Newstrom, you’re trained for this category of operation. But nobody else took the warnings sufficiently seriously—except for your department, and mine.★★

  ★★But what about the others?★★

  She stares at me grimly. ★★Blame Ellis Billington, Bob. Remember, if he wasn’t into the hard sell, this wouldn’t have happened.★★

  Then she turns and stalks away, leaving me alone and shaking in the corridor, with a corpse and a locked conference room full of middle-management zombies to explain.

  4.

  YOU’RE IN THE JET SET NOW

  MY CHECKOUT IS EVER SO SLIGHTLY DELAYED. I spend about eight hours at the nearest police station being questioned by one GSA desk pilot after another. At first I think they’re going to arrest me—shoot the messenger is a well-known parlor game in spook circles—but after a few fraught hours there’s a change in the tone of the interrogation. Someone higher up has obviously got a handle on events and is smoothing my path. “It is best for you to leave the country tomorrow,” says Gerhardt from Frankfurt, not smiling. “Later we will have questions, but not now.” He shakes his head. “If you should happen to see Ms. Random, please explain that we have questions for her, also.” A taciturn cop drives me back to the hotel, where a GSA cleaning team has replaced the conference room door with a blank stretch of brand-new wall. I walk past it without quite losing my shit, then retreat to my shielded bedroom and spend a sleepless night trying to second-guess myself. But not only is the past another country, it’s one that doesn’t issue visas; and so, first thing in the morning, I head downstairs to collect the hire car.

  A tech support nightmare is waiting for me down in the garage. Pinky is goose-stepping around with a clipboard, trying to look officious while Brains is elbow-deep in the trunk with a circuit tester and a roll of gaffer tape.

  “What. The. Fuck?” I manage to say, then lean again
st a concrete pillar.

  “We’ve been modifying this Smart car for you!” Pinky says excitedly. “You need to know how to use all its special features.”

  I rub my eyes in disbelief. “Listen guys, I’ve been attacked by brain-eating zombies and I’m due on a flight to Saint Martin tonight. This isn’t the right time to show me your toys. I just want to get home—”

  “Impossible,” Brains mutters around a mouthful of oily bolts that look suspiciously as if they’ve just come out of the engine manifold.

  “Angleton told us not to let you go until you’d finished your briefing!” Pinky exclaims.

  There’s no escape. “Okay.” I yawn. “You just put those bolts back and I’ll be going.”

  “Look in the boot, here. What our American friends would call the trunk. Careful, mind that pipe! Good. Now pay attention, Bob. We’ve added a Bluetooth host under the driver’s seat, and a repurposed personal video player running Linux. Peripheral screens at all five cardinal points, five grams of graveyard dust mixed with oil of Bergamot and tongue of newt in the cigarette lighter socket, and a fully connected Dee-Hamilton circuit glued to the underside of the body shell. As long as the ignition is running, you’re safe from possession attempts. If you need to dispose of a zombie in the passenger seat, just punch in the lighter button and wait for the magic smoke. You’ve got a mobile phone, yes? With Bluetooth and a Java sandbox? Great, I’ll e-mail you an applet—run it, pair your phone with the car’s hub, and all you have to do is dial 6-6-6 and the car will come to you, wherever you are. There’s another applet to remotely trigger all the car’s countermeasures, just in case someone’s sneaked a surprise into it.”

  I shake my head, but it won’t stop spinning. “Zombie smoke in the lighter socket, Dee-Hamilton circuit in the body shell, and the car comes when I summon it. Okay. Hey, what’s—”

  He slaps my hand as I reach for the boxy lump fastened to the gearshift with duct tape. “Don’t touch that button, Bob!”