by Jay Smith
"Where did you find the case?"
"In the second crate J-P was trying to mail out. It had a couple of badges, framed pictures, marriage license and the case. I just caught it on the loading dock waiting for a lift to the airport. Lucky me."
"Hey," Diane said. "How about you pull the car over."
Murray nodded. "How about we put on a little Coldplay and slather ourselves in mayonnaise?"
Diane drew her nine millimeter. "Pull the car over now."
"Don't wanna. Don't hafta."
"Diplomatic immunity only works in movies."
"I'll stop, but as soon as I do, Pancho Villa up front there will send the order and two lives end. Right now, they're adding another coat to that office bedroom. I've got two guys in the kitchen and one guy fingering a stolen thirty-eight in the upstairs hallway out of sight. You know how long people will care about two dead people in a robbery-murder? About a week. Police will let the leads go cold and once the dead are buried someone else's tragedy will fill the news hour. Maybe a busty red-headed porn actress in Vegas found dead on a construction site half buried ass-up in drying cement? It has all the great hooks of a clickbait news story, don't you think?"
I asked, "You just think that up or do you have a team on standby for that, too?"
Murray scratched his head. "It's the details. The details are fun to think up."
"Is Jean-Paul still alive?"
"We were going to ask you that, but I think you know as much as us. That's not to say you don't know things. So don't fill up on the chow because you'll just leave it all over the dungeon floor."
Diane went to holster her weapon but Murray stopped her with a "gimme" hand. She turned it in her fingers and handed it over.
"You know what's pretty pathetic?" Murray folded his hands behind his head. "The people you care about most in the whole wide world are your ex-wife, her lover and a fuckin' prostitute. We know your mom's still alive – kinda - but that would almost be like a mercy killing. You seen her lately? Holy shit, man. Our guy just walked right in."
"Stop."
"Nobody said anything to him and he got to the room and – Russian thugs scare the holy bees out of me, but Leonid left there saying he wouldn't unleash that soul on Hell. What's her story?"
I think he saw something of what Leonid saw in my mother's face in mine because he stopped talking. But only to shift back to his original point. "No wonder Parker picked you. You've got nothing to lose, nobody to live for. When you showed up on my beach I thought you were the loneliest mo-fo I'd ever seen. I hoped to GOD you and Nadeim would hook up just so I didn't feel like we were punting a one-eyed AIDS baby."
Diane sat back and folded her arms. "I was really beginning to like you, Murray. What's going to happen to me, now?"
Murray's lip curled on one side. "That's up to the Russians. Don't sweat it. Nobody's getting dumped out of the plane before it lands. I know that's on your mind, Winston. And yeah, I knew about Nadeim. She betrayed The Realm along with everyone else who fell out of the sky that morning."
Diane stared at him in shock, began to speak, but stopped.
"So we'll be getting on a plane, taking a nice sleepytime cocktail and when you get up, you'll be tried for treason. Once that's over, Claire and Clownshoe and Ebony Jones, PI here will go on with their lives."
"You're just gonna let me go," Diane snipped.
"We've got a lot of ways of keeping people quiet and alive, even useful to our cause. And you've got a past. We just need to find it. For now, if you don't play…well, you know how this works."
Back to Aeternus, one final time it seemed.
TRE INTERMEDIO
Barry Cheun’s actual working office was not befitting a man of his status. Alan Horus said as much every time he had to descend from the executive suites to discuss a pressing and delicate matter with his Chief Information Officer. As a courtier, Barry – aka Lord Floydicus – had his own luxury suite office for the purpose of impressing the groundlings and expressing his rank to visiting competitors and investors. The executive office with its two executive staffers, imported stones and wood, cost more than his entire staff of coders and testers. Barry, who could not overstate the importance of working directly with the staff, chose to redecorate a supply closet in Sub-Basement 2 and endure the yellow lights reflecting off white-washed cinderblocks, monitoring the pace and "vibe" of his programming bullpen through a bay window.
He had everything he needed to keep the Aeternus grid running and his success in managing a number of emergencies showed the value of proximity to his staff over his power over them.
Alan Horus had an appearance scheduled elsewhere in the resort requiring him to visit Barry in his office while wearing his Lord Bunting-upon-Stropf attire. When the black cape and leather garments stepped off the elevator on the far side of the bullpen, coders and testers stopped working.
The comparisons to Darth Vader were unavoidable. Despite not wearing a helmet or mask, Alan Horus’ face carried an award-winning level of Shakespearian brooding. He marched across the cube farm, silencing the coders and programmers as he went. Some stood up to get a better look while others rose like it was their duty to do so when someone of rank arrived.
Horus ignored everything and everyone until he reached Barry’s office door and the cheesy sign taped to the glass window. It read (in comic sans): "OFFICE OF LORD FLOYDICUS, CIO." Barry did and said nothing. In his mind, it was always best to let Alan start the scene to set the tone and the pace. Barry would slide into whatever role was needed.
Horus closed the door behind him, surveyed the office and its cheap nerd relics scattered around on bookshelves and filing cabinets. He judged everything with a curled lip. Barry saved the memo he’d been working on regarding bathroom breaks and sat back in his chair. The dramatic pause stretched into an awkward silence. Alan was breathing heavy and working on how to say what he came to say. This worried Barry, so he broke protocol.
"Alan? Can I help y-"
"How soon can we go live?"
Barry nodded as if contemplating an answer but was really working out what the fuck Alan was asking about. A second later, he settled on the new grid expansion in Aeternus. It was the biggest project in the portfolio with a firm projected "go-live" date.
"Discovered Realms," Barry replied, "The plan is for twelve weeks."
"That's not what I asked you."
This was not a hypothetical situation, Barry understood. Alan wouldn’t be standing in his office if this wasn’t something he needed. The only thing missing from the rise and fall of Alan’s chest was the characteristic wheezing of Lord Vader’s respirator. Having used that time to pretend to think about it, Barry answered, "We can flip a switch and go live now, Alan but there would be nothing in the new realm but -- landscape. But we haven't QA'ed anything. The simulator will be ready this weekend but it will take four weeks to playtest the entire grid."
"Shorten it."
After a quick sputter, Barry asked with sincerity: "Are you mental? The security tests alone --"
"This isn't Jurassic Park. No one will die if the grid flickers. Just – make it happen. Four weeks."
"'Make it happen'? ‘Four weeks’? Alan – This is expanding the visible realm by thirty-five percent. This is like suddenly revealing a land mass the size and complexity of Seward's Folly. There's a whole marketing component to get people ready for it…"
"Good! Let the intrepid ones discover it. Chance favors the prepared mind. Once word spreads through the guilds and people start getting rich off it the entire realm will migrate and expand. The sudden discovery will slow the migration. But new accounts will surge. Weed out the auto-miners with hard predators. The Elite and the Powerful will unseat themselves to forge new kingdoms and others will start expensive wars to take those abandoned and weakened lands…this is an opportunity, Barry. Don't wither at the risk."
Barry considered his words carefully, then decided politics would not save the day. "Great speech, Alan. But th
is requires rooms full of code monkeys and testers. There's not enough Fanta and Red Bull to get our existing team into a strong Beta in four weeks. A go-live in 12 weeks with limited access to our elite members is what we agreed on and what we planned for…"
"Plans change. And I expect you to be flexible and creative enough to facilitate those changes."
"What are you now, a Bond villain? You're a brilliant man, Alan. You know there are limits. You get me twenty more coders in here, make sure they're bright, hungry and can work in shifts through the night and MAYBE we'll shave a week off the turnaround…but it will put us close to a million over budget. BUT, if you sign the staff aug request and work contracts I’ll…"
"No. We don’t have the capital."
"What?" Barry was shocked. That was like Warren Buffett announcing he had to eat bologna for the rest of the month because his paycheck wouldn’t stretch.
"We took a – significant – hit to our finances today and while I could pay for it, I can’t afford to give anyone the impression we are weak. We have to make this happen with existing resources."
"Anyone – meaning the other courtiers."
"Or competitors. Or the hotel. We’re about to renegotiate that deal for the hotels in Atlanta and Orlando with New Zealand on the horizon. Weakness here is weakness in all endeavors, Barry."
Christ, Barry thought. He’s even getting thrifty with his calendar affirmations. "You could have one of your ghosts crap out another Aeternus novel in four weeks."
Horus spat, "Be serious."
"You think I’m not? It will take twelve weeks to meet your personal standards for uptime and performance. Alan – you don't want fifty thousand people ‘porting into these grids and crashing the network."
Horus turned away and contemplated Barry’s Lord of the Rings Lego figurine collection.
Barry continued, "You KNOW the Chinese will send a hundred kids in to punch through everything to find weaknesses and to exploit assets. People are gonna try and break it. If we have to reset we'll have to move the resources around or…"
Alan Horus turned back to Barry careful to not show his face through the window to the workers pretending not to peek in. It was a severe, desperate look that Barry did not have the clearance to see before that moment. It was the look of a man who was as much in pain about having to ask for help as needing it. "If it isn't functioning in four weeks…" Alan drew close enough that Barry could see the imperfections in Alan's polished teeth and detect the lingering scent of cheap cologne and Russian cigarettes – the kind his night supervisors smoked in the receiving docks where they took their two AM breaks. "If we're not live next month, Barry, we won't have the capital to launch it in twelve weeks. Its costs will draw from the main operation and unless we bring in the projected revenue from new subscribers and renewals – the internal economy bolt we’ve been promised – Aeternus may collapse in a matter of months. No new hotels. No expanded operations overseas. We’ll be picked apart by Blizzard, Google, and half a dozen other companies by Christmas."
"oh. Wow. That – that sucks." The glare and sneer backing away from Barry told him that was the understatement of the god-damned year. Barry sat back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head as he did when working out ways to fix the impossible. He considered the recent capacity reports he signed off on from the security team. The expansion of Aeternus was intended to help deal with unprecedented growth in players. The core realm had been running a "98/78" fluctuation between highest load percentage and lowest on each server grid. Users with lower-end computers could not even log into that kind of area for all the vectors and refreshes needed to capture hundreds of PCs, MPCs, buildings, animations, and scripts being executed at the same time. Combat was nearly impossible in areas running over 95 percent capacity. By comparison a full-on battle between 20,000 NPC warriors on the same sized server, clashing and casting magic would push the server to only about 50 percent capacity. It was civilization that drew a lot of processing power. Barry spent a lot of time keeping the custom scripts, gestures, flowing robes, dances, and magic under control in those areas. Every grid has some kind of capacity issue due to the growing number of individualized scripts and the complex buildings and objects being made. Every area – but one.
What about –" Barry stopped. He knew he shouldn't even mention it out loud.
"What about what?"
"Just spit-balling here, boss, but – what about the VeilLand grid?"
Horus didn't react. "What about the VeilLand grid?"
"What if we expanded membership there? It's highly profitable but underutilized…"
"No."
"It runs at twenty-five percent capacity at peak, plus it's a stable platform."
"No."
"Alan, the place profits a million every month. It pays your coders and testers. If you just changed the administration policy and did some stealth marketing, you could double that in a week."
"Barry, you don’t know about The VeilLands. You asked me not to tell you when you first heard about what people do in there."
"I didn’t say I condoned it, but if you’re that strapped and don’t want a total system-wide crash on your hands when you’re financially vulnerable –"
Horus responded by picking up a Big Bang Theory coffee mug from Barry’s desk and smashing it through the office door window. All work in the coding cubes, idle conversation, and speculation as to the nature of Lord BUS’s visit, came to a sudden stop. Faces rose from behind cubicle walls like timid Meer cats taking a peek for predators.
"Alan," Barry said, sitting back in his chair, hands still clasped behind his head. "You are so lucky those monkeys have signed NDAs. And my daughter gave me that mug for Solstice."
Horus growled, planted his knuckles on Barry’s desk, but did not meet his eyes. "I’ll replace it. I’ll buy her a fucking pony." He turned on Barry. "I will send her AND the pony AND the new fucking mug to Ivy League schools if you can get the new regions up in four weeks."
Barry shook his head. "For your own good and the rest of this company – no. VeilLands. Think about it. I can make it happen in less than a week, add another level of security and auditing. Your existing clients will never see the new people. Now make a dramatic exit and sweep your cape as you go and I’ll tell the crew you scared the hemorrhoids off of me."
"Why do I keep feeding you? Clothing you? Tolerating your insubordinate, insufferable ‘wit’?"
"Because I keep you from making stupid IT decisions. And if it wasn’t for me, you would have gone with the board game you were offered instead of this and be writing gay porn under four pen names from your Unabomber shack on the Stropf River just to keep on top of your debts. You rule your fantasy world, Alan, but only while I allow that world to exist. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?"
Alan stormed out of the office, boots crushing the glass pieces outside the door, cape billowing behind him as he went.
PART NINE
Aeternus
"This is not about taking our severed heads, putting them in jars and living life in a digital illusion. This is about creating a life that people want to share and bring that life from the digital to the real. I am not leading change. The people demand it. Removed of its traditional biases and filters of politics and religion, ethnicity and race – people begin to see the life they want and can collective begin to build that life together!"
- Alan Horus
(Speech to the Typhoon Summit on Narrative Agency, 2016)
Chapter Thirty-One
I got to keep my clothes on this time.
Alan folded his hands and made a steeple with his index fingers. He pressed his lips to the tips of that steeple and offered a weary, pop-eyed glance like a student of the Stavro Blofeld School of Intimidation. "Gentlemen," Alan called. "Please join us."
Several beefy, cranky-eyed thugs entered the room and assembled around Alan's executive chair like an awkward photo sitting for the local Russian MurderDeathKill Club. They didn't need to convince
anyone that they were men acquainted with pain and violence. Despite their expensive, tailored suits their exposed flesh bore years of deep, fat scars and badly-fused bones. I pictured this is how each of them wanted to look in his coffin when the day they came up against something that did not, as the old adage read, "make them stronger."
The last one to enter seemed to be in the wrong room and might have been lost on his way to one of Vegas' many sideshows. I suspected the others called him up at the last minute and all he had clean was a pair of Big & Tall coveralls and a t-shirt with just a few suspicious stains across the front. Against his peers and their well-manicured fingers and intricate manscaping, he was someone who didn't mind getting filthy. My guess was that if I had to leave by force, he would be the one called up to lay on hands. He leaned against the office wall and appeared more interested in a portrait of Alan Horus shaking hands with George Clooney than what was going on.
I sat back in my comfortable execution chair, left leg crossed over my right in a desperate attempt to appear casual. One thing became clear from surveying their scarred, weathered faces: they were the real power in the room. These half dozen men provided Alan Horus with the security he needed to rule his kingdom. Parker's advice made more sense in this context.
"Remember," Park had said. "The more people they bring into a room to 'talk' the less control they have over the outcome. Numbers mean intimidation. Numbers mean fear. If the muscle at the table is not invested in the outcome, so much the better."
Alan spoke to me through his steepled fingers. "You know my associates, I believe."
"No. These are the kind of men you swear you've never met even if know them well."
The Russians didn't react, but Alan's familiar glare meant he was working out my next four moves in his brain game.
Finally, Alan replied, "These are some of my international partners. I asked them to join us because much of what you have is their intellectual property as mine. They persuaded me to ask you one last time to give it all back before they go to the authorities and hit you with so many felonies you'll plead just to get out of the months it will take to list the charges." He looked at the tallest of the Russians. "I think I heard the word 'espionage' in their conversations."
