The Metaverse: Virtual Life-Real Death

by William Kurth

  “Seeing as how y’all materialized and there are three of you, I’m figuring you for DLS people or the feds. The guy that did this walked in and then calmly walked out. On the chance you are DLS that was my lawyer I was talking with. I’ll be suing.”

  Argosi extended his hand to the man. “Dominic Argosi, Commander of the FBI’s Metaverse Crime Team. This is Special Agent in Charge Parker, Agent Callum and Robert Wu, a member of our technical team.”

  “Bill Lewis, everyone calls me Tex. I’m the CEO of Global Energy Inc. Your entrance scared the crap out of me. I sometimes forget where I am and I’m not accustomed to seeing folks just materialize.” Tex said, taking Argosi’s hand and then shaking the others.

  Argosi looked around; the disheveled desk with some items knocked over or laying on the floor caught his attention.

  “According to the receptionist. She’s the one that called. The guy, after saying that he was here to see Joanne, walked into this office and without saying a word leaned over Joanne’s desk, grabbed her by the throat, lifted her up and drug her across the desk. Then he pushed her through the window. I understand she is laying on top of a car parked on the street. I have the building’s security AE’s down there trying to keep people back.”

  Tex looked at the floor then back at Argosi.

  “Damn shame. I’m afraid with what’s been going on I know the answer to the question, but have to ask. Have y’all heard if she is ok?”

  Argosi looked to Callum

  “No word, sir.”

  “Sorry, Tex. As soon as we can get someone to her physical location we will know more.”

  “She’s in Connecticut. I’ve only met her in the real world once or twice. Sweet Lady. Married, couple of kids.”

  “We’d like to talk to the secretary, is she still here?” Parker asked, changing the subject.

  “No, sir. I sent all the employees home. The whole place is empty except my AE’s. Told the rest to do whatever work they can from home. That’ll be easier for some than for others, and it’s gonna cost us a ton and is likely to slow deliveries.”

  Tex stared out the window before speaking again.

  “I never cared much for working in-world here. Spend as little time in it as possible. It is cost effective but I just never liked it much. Now I know why. One crazy guy figures out how to kill people here, and we either pay up or don’t do business here. Well, I can tell you who is going to pay. Digital-Life Systems. They assured us everything was safe and that there was no reason to be concerned. I’m thinking once word gets out, all the firms here will bail or pay up or do what I’m gonna do: go after the bastards who let this criminal figure a way into their system. Hopefully you boys will stop him before anyone else gets hurt.”

  The group of agents let the CEO vent. There was not much else they could say to him. Telling him that he or his employees were safe was a non-starter. Telling him that the FBI would soon catch the killer had as much credibility as DLS had in telling him the Metaverse was safe.

  No matter how much everyone wanted to think otherwise, the facts spoke for themselves. They were no closer to finding the killer or killers let alone stopping him, her or them. Argosi didn’t like feeling so helpless but what he felt didn’t matter. There was a job to do, and he would do it.

  Weston, Connecticut

  Lt. Joe Harrison of the Weston Volunteer Fire Department supervised his firemen as they used the hydraulic rescue tools, commonly called the Jaws of Life, to first cut into and then pry open the H-Pod. Neither Harrison nor his firefighters had ever received any training on having to extract someone from one of these things in the quiet, affluent community.

  Just getting into the ten-thousand square foot home on Ridge Lane was a bit of a chore. No one answered the intercom system at the gate, and Harrison had to force his way through that and then the front door which looked like a beautiful custom wood door but was, in fact, a custom reinforced steel one. The same was true of the door in the basement that led to the H-Pod room. Since people often would be online and sealed up in their pods for days at a time, it was common, especially in the more affluent communities, to have robust security systems in place.

  None of those systems helped the person inside the pod who came into view as the two halves of the pod separated. The person, not recognizable as such now, was crushed into a ball. Many compound fractures visible through the tangled servos, linkages and structure of the still smoking exoskeleton.

  “Easy fella’s, let’s back away and make sure there are no live wires here from some battery or capacitor system. A few more minutes won’t make any difference to this person.” Harrison said, shaking his head at the carnage.

  MCT Lab, New Polis, Metaverse

  Argosi sat in the conference room looking around at the assembled agents. All had been chasing down leads or trying to find an electronic trail for both the real world systems as well as the in-world locations where they could place the mysterious Alex Reynolds. So far everything had been a dead end, inconclusive or they were still trying to run down information that had come in from a variety of leads.

  “Where are we on any financial trails?” Argosi asked Parker.

  “Sir, we don’t have anything on that. When someone pays the fees, just like any other Metaverse transaction, M-Dollars move from that account. The funds are ‘stamped’ as legitimate and then can be transferred anywhere.” Parker answered.

  “Can we trace the stamp?” Argosi asked.

  Parker wagged his head and continued.

  “The stamp legitimizes the funds but does not in itself track them, like the serial number on a dollar bill. Then the amount goes to a one-time address where it sits until it’s collected by an accounting app that verifies the stamp. That app then moves it to a second one-time address.”

  “So only the app, or whoever is using it, knows the address of both?”

  “Exactly, Commander. Except it doesn’t end there. Most likely several other layers of one time addresses and apps move it. Eventually, it gets into an actual account or probably a lot of accounts where it becomes a legal currency in a central bank.” Parker cleared his throat.

  “The process is a form of ‘cryptocurrency,’ simple and difficult to track unless you know the players involved.”

  “You mentioned a central bank. Did you mean one here in the Metaverse?” Argosi asked.

  “Yes sir, there are a few, but my money, no pun intended, would be on the Bank of St. Petersburg,” Parker answered.

  “St. Petersburg? Who owns that?” Argosi shot back.

  “It’s the largest bank in the Metaverse; its holdings extend into the real world where even after the currency exchange its holdings are significant and extensive. The name St. Petersburg relates to its founding by our good friends the Russians who saw a way to launder real world money into the Metaverse and vice versa. In the past, if you had a lot of money and wanted to keep it and yourself discreet you went to a Swiss Banker. Now in the Metaverse it’s a Russian Banker, at least from the real world side. Edgar Bartholomew Mathias owns the bank.”

  “Is he Russian?” Callum asked.

  “It’s not a he. It’s an it, no offense...” Parker shot Wu a warm smile, which Wu returned.

  “None taken, boss.”

  Parker puffed out his cheeks.

  “Mathias is an AE, actually a Digital Sentient Being, and an incredibly wealthy one which seems ironic since he doesn’t need money.”

  Argosi rubbed his temples yet again.

  “Ok, maybe we can talk with him. Get his help. Set up a meeting with him, or it, or whomever over at the bank.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Next item.” Argosi shuffled his notes.

  “We can see Reynolds arrive and leave by transporter in the lobby of the GEI building. We can see him in the elevators, walking down the hallway, etc. We have the video of him dragging the victim from her desk to the window, pushing her through it and dropping her. But we can’t trace back the transporter l
ocations to anywhere useful?”

  “No, Commander.” Parker crossed his arms.

  “He transferred to and from several places, but the last one we have is him getting out of a cab. We think he may have changed his appearance in a PDR. Unlike the teleports there is no record of when someone enters or leaves them. We would have to see him go into one visually and so far, we cannot. It’s too far back tangentially in the video stream.”

  “PDR? Tangential video stream?” Argosi asked.

  “Sir,” Parker began. “PDR’s are public dressing rooms. You go into them to change clothes; they are mostly individual pods that one can stand in to change their outfit or even appearance. It is to keep the realism of New Polis, so people are not just seen walking down the street or in some other place cycling through clothing or avatars. The only restrictions are that you cannot deviate from a human form or have clothing that is either not realistic or out of place, like dressing from the Victorian era for example.”

  Parker gave a second for any questions, but Argosi was all ears.

  “When we speak of the video stream, and tangentially we are talking about two different things that have a common connection at a point in time. For example, the video in the GEI building off their security cameras will loop through every twenty-four or forty-eight hours or any amount that they want. That is one resource that they or we can archive and always view. The same applies to any other cameras that any other person or facility has a saved copy that we can get ahold of.”

  Parker paused again. “Let me know if I lose you in this next part, sir.” Argosi nodded and gave him a thumbs-up.

  Parker continued. “From this lab, we can see everything everywhere and anywhere that is going on in the Metaverse whether it’s in New Polis or elsewhere. The exception being sovereign governments who create their own digital worlds inside their servers, just as we do inside this building and with our personnel. That ability, however, is a short-lived one. We can see in real time and maybe back for a few minutes to perhaps 30 minutes. We can go to anyplace and view it from any angle but unless we know in advance to record that area for surveillance purposes our ability to go back in time as it were, perishes rapidly depending on any number of factors.”

  Parker paused for a moment to compress his thoughts on a complicated topic.

  “DLS’s primary servers maintains the basic structure, the buildings, land, sea, sky, etc. so that they cannot be altered. When individuals enter using their own server or another’s, that server and the DLS one merge, and can be seen on the primary servers. But that image exists only in real time, when it’s occurring. No video is recorded. The resources to do that would be enormous, but for a few minutes after it occurs it remains in the cache. That’s where we pick it up if we can get to it in time.”

  So far so good?” Parker asked Argosi.

  “I’m getting the gist, keep going.”

  “When we talk about something being too far back tangentially in the video stream we are saying that we can see Reynolds in a precise location, we know he was there. What we don’t know is which way he may have come from or went before that. Cameras are not as common in the Metaverse as they are in the real world. Primarily they are used here in places of business to keep an eye on employees or other activities. Without a video recording, we don’t know which way to turn and look. What we have to work with is a rapidly diminishing record assuming we go in the right direction if we are lucky, and Reynolds is unlucky. If we are unlucky, then the possibilities are too many to search so quickly as we try to branch out from that last visual.”

  Argosi nodded, trying to grasp the irony of being able to see everywhere at once but not knowing where to look.

  “If I may, sir.”

  “Go ahead,” Argosi answered.

  “I don’t think luck had anything to do with it.”

  “No? Why not?” asked Argosi.

  “Reynolds ran out the clock; he spent a lot of time in teleporters, cabs, PDR’s and areas with large crowds knowing that we would attempt to track him.”

  “And you think he knew those things about our limitations? Think he is an insider at DLS?”

  “I think he is an AE.” Wu ground his teeth.

  “Why?” Parker asked.

  “Because it’s what I would do,” Wu answered.

  Boulder Colorado Police Department

  Lt. Debbie Shoemaker was getting ready to call it quits for the day. She felt good about the day’s events and was grateful that the FBI was taking over the Sullivan murder, since it was now part of a larger investigation that crossed state and digital lines. Shoemaker had just sent off a memo to her captain telling him that the Boulder PD was no longer the lead investigative agency.

  It was almost 5 pm when the phone rang. The call was from the crime lab, and she looked forward to telling them that everything was going to the feds, so she answered it instead of letting it go to voice mail.

  “Hey LT, its Dawson down here in the lab. Do you have a minute, ma’am?”

  “For you, Steve? Of course. What do you have?”

  “Well, I started looking into the Nutrient angle from the sample that we collected from the garage in the Sullivan murder, the urine. It turns out that our suspect is a vegan.”

  “Okay. I didn’t know that there was vegetarian Nutrient, I thought it was all the same...”

  “Not vegetarian, ma’am. Vegan.” Dawson broke in.

  “What’s the difference?

  “Vegetarians don’t eat meat, fish, or poultry. They will eat eggs, cheese, dairy products. A vegan won’t eat any of those things. They won’t even eat honey.”

  “Okay, Steve. This involves the Nutrient and the sample we took in relation to the murder how?”

  “Well, ma’am, when we broke down the sample we found several tags from the Nutrient that we couldn’t readily identify. I got curious and called over to the Nutrient people. I sent them some slides of the sample and they confirmed that it was from a particular facility that only produced vegan Nutrient. Apparently if you are a vegan you don’t want your food made even in the same facility where animal proteins get processed.”

  “No, of course not.” Shoemaker chimed in, rolling her eyes.

  “Anyway, this is where it gets interesting. The tags were from a specific Nutrient that is not made in large volumes as the demand is not as high as some others. Something to do with a type of moss, called ‘Irish Moss.’ It has properties that help to soothe the digestive process organically. Most commonly it’s taken as a form of Nutrient mineral water.”

  “Ok. I’m still waiting for the interesting part.”

  “Well, this is the thing. According to Nutrient, there are only a couple places in the Denver area that sell it. Maybe they will have a record of who has bought some recently. The guys at Nutrient tell me that they don’t sell a whole lot of it so maybe this could be a lead?”

  Shoemaker’s brain raced. “Steve, did Nutrient happen to provide you the list of retailers in the area that sell it?” Shoemaker asked, leaning forward as she made some quick notes on a digital legal pad. One of the notes read “Irish Moss,” which she circled.

  “Yes, ma’am there is only five in the whole state, one right here in Boulder.”

  “Send me the list ASAP. Great work, Steve.”

  “Thanks, LT.”

  Shoemaker hung up and then dialed Sgt. Martinez.

  “Yes, ma’am. What’s going on?”

  “Meet me at the car and tell your wife that you are going to be working late.”

  New Polis, Metaverse

  MD looked over Reynold’s shoulder as he highlighted some lines of a spreadsheet that was open on the screen in front of him. On another screen was the view of Joanne Hendricks body lying over the crushed top of the car. Her body under a tarp which had been tied down. MD had allowed the tarp, placed there by GEI security AE’s, but not the body to be removed. Of course, he had Alex edit the tarp so that her head was just visible under it, her hair visibly wa
ving whenever the breeze would kick up. At her legs, Alex had shortened the tarp, and her feet were visible, one of them shoeless. The body would remain until GEI had paid the fee. Like the two bodies in the canyon, MD had to devote some AE’s to the task of keeping DLS unsuccessful in its continued efforts to edit or remove the image.

  A couple of mounted policemen, along with security AE’s from GEI, kept the people away. MD cycled through news reports on a third monitor all of whom were covering the latest killing.

  “Sir, so far it looks like we have thirteen corporations who have paid the fee since the news broke about the GEI employee. In M-Dollars, that represents two hundred percent of the amount collected just today from the individual accounts. It seems the corporations are far more risk adverse than individual account holders.”

  “Yes, Alex, as we talked about earlier. They respond to the bottom line. It’s early still; we will see how much of an impact the latest victim has on them.” MD said and then laughed out loud as he realized his unintended pun.

  If Alex caught it, he didn’t react. The victim certainly made an impact on the car, but MD’s first preference was to have her splatter on the street. Now seeing her sprawled on the car, which was fortuitously present under where she fell, framed the corpse better. The face through the windshield, blood down the hood. People could walk around her and look into one of the car’s side windows or from the back window and up at her face, eyes open in horror. Of course, now they were being kept back, but a curious onlooker still could get a decent look nonetheless.

  How she must have been surprised that she was allowed to fall. Sheer genius MD. A work of art even. He thought, quite pleased with the outcome.

  A video would be uploaded and viewed for eternity. Alex would be producing it shortly, and they would release it in the morning following the pattern of the last two demonstrations.

  MD changed his thoughts to the next victim.