by Guy Morpuss
Les nodded. ‘Sierra told me that. You should consider it. You schizos are oddly suited to it. The downside is small for you. And you have five different skillsets in one person. You can choose who plays what games. Go with your strengths.’
‘It doesn’t appeal to me,’ said Alex. ‘Anyway, how does someone who’s spent his life travelling the sea know so much about death parks?’
‘I have a cousin who works in one.’ He laughed. ‘Well, not really a cousin. Back in Kazahkstan we’re all cousins, brothers, uncles, whatever. I grew up with Valya. We sailed together for a while. Before he left to do … other things. Not all of them entirely legal. But he’d be a good person to know if you ever went.’
‘No thanks,’ said Alex. ‘Killing people – even end-of-lifers – isn’t my thing.’
Les shrugged. ‘It’s easier than you think.’
Alex looked at him in surprise. ‘You’ve been to a death park?’
‘No, but my youth was not entirely blameless. Sometimes there are things you need to do.’
The sun had vanished beneath the horizon. Lights were starting to show on the banks of the river. Alex checked the time.
‘I don’t have long left, Les. Thanks for everything. It won’t be me getting off in the morning. So this is goodbye.’
He turned to the burly captain and extended his hand, but found himself engulfed in a fierce bear hug. It went on for longer than Alex would have liked.
Eventually Les released him, thumping him on the back. ‘With you, Alex, it’s been a pleasure. Stay in touch.’
ALEX
DAY THREE
21:00–02:00
Sierra had shown a bit more responsibility than usual. I woke in a cheap motel room. Although with a wicked hangover. Worse than ever.
I checked the time. I was awake an hour early. Our schedule had changed with Mike’s disappearance. Which made sense.
My second surprise was a message from Sierra saying that she had played and won a game so I didn’t have to. I couldn’t understand how we’d missed this requirement. Kate was normally on top of these things. But I was beginning to suspect that ParkGov was making up the rules as it went along, trying to keep things interesting by ensuring that the big winners kept risking their time.
I shot back a reply, copied to the others.
Good win there, Sierra, but why follow it up by leaving us drunk again? I’ve given up complaining. When this is all over I’m going to be proposing a formal vote that you be downloaded into rehab until cured. This can’t keep happening.
Mike is still gone. I don’t know what is going on but I’m sure you’re not telling us the truth about it.
Stop this now, and for once be honest with us. Alex.
Kate had messaged Ben and me to say that she had discovered that the pills being sold by Guskov were for andis; nothing to do with Mike wanting boosters or Sierra being on drugs again. That was disappointing. Although I noticed that she hadn’t copied in Sierra.
Then one from Ben. Unlike Kate, he had sent it to all of us. Did he think Mike was still getting messages? Did he trust Sierra? Did he still not see that she was probably behind this?
All. Well that was an interesting cycle. I got picked up by Guskov’s thugs and dragged back to the Death’s Head. It seems that the dealer Sierra met, Karl, got murdered by someone last night. Guskov thought that Sierra had done it. I found some clips [attached] that made it pretty clear it was Amy Bird. Which was fine until he told us that he actually sells andis, and one of us bought Bird a week ago! I don’t know who to trust now, so I’m sending this to all of you.
There’s clearly a human mind inside Bird, but I don’t see how it can be Mike since Kate met Bird before he disappeared. Guskov either doesn’t know where Bird is, or he’s not telling us. I’ve changed things so all of us will get an alert if she’s spotted anywhere in the park.
Guskov was pretty odd. Talked big and threatened to have us skinned alive, but then let me go in return for a payment of ten years.
My view is we get out of the park now, and once we’re safe, report this to CGov. They can go places even I can’t, and work out what actually happened. We’re being watched by people, and I haven’t got time to find out who, or why. I don’t want to abandon Mike but if he’s still around CGov must be able to find him.
Votes by next cycle? Ben.
I checked our balance: 17.4 years, which made sense with Ben losing ten years and Sierra’s win. I had to admit that for once Sierra had stepped up, even if it was only in her own interests. She was also right that if we were staying we needed to choose our challenge for the next cycle. Which suited me just fine. I didn’t want us to throw ourselves on the mercy of CGov.
Ben had already risked attracting their attention by mentioning Karl’s murder. That was an uncharacteristic slip. However he seemed to be in a panic. Cutting and running was not the right answer.
What to send to Ben? And Kate? I sat on the edge of the bed thinking for a long time. Not helped by the fuzzy state of my head. It was a shame that hangovers couldn’t stick with the mind that had created them. Our body’s ability to deal with alcohol seemed to be decreasing with every day left. Or maybe it was Sierra’s drinking that was increasing.
Eventually I decided what to say.
Kate/Ben, thanks for the updates. This is all very odd. Well done on talking your way out, Ben. Tough that we lost ten years, but better that than we die outside an arena and end up mindwiped.
I don’t know what happened with the challenges on the last cycle, but something went wrong. For once Sierra did something useful, and got us out of it. Although I find it hard to believe that she was motivated by anything other than self-interest.
Looking at the big picture, I don’t understand why Mike or Sierra would be buying an andi. They must have done it in the first cycle we were here.
Why use the andi to kill someone? We know Sierra arranged to meet Karl. She hasn’t told us what happened, or how she met him without seeing Bird there. It doesn’t sound as though Guskov had Karl killed, which makes it more likely it was Sierra. But what could she be trying to hide?
This may sound crazy, but what if Mike and Sierra have been working together? They’ve always been the closest. He was the one who tried to defend her after Montreal. If it wasn’t for him she’d still be in stasis. And it was the two of them who were keenest to come to the death park.
Here’s a theory. We know that Sierra would rather not have us around. And Bird told Kate that she wanted to move her mind into another body. What if Sierra decided to move her mind into an andi body and persuaded Mike to help. But something went wrong, and instead of Sierra getting downloaded into the andi, Mike was. Which explains why he’s disappeared. Maybe Karl was being paid to help, and Sierra had to dispose of him to keep him quiet. That would explain why Guskov doesn’t know what’s going on.
I don’t know. Maybe that’s too far-fetched. We need to find Bird if we are going to solve this. We’ll know if Mike’s inside her.
I’ll take a look at the challenges for tomorrow and get back to you on those. Alex.
I thought carefully before sending it. I was starting to lose track of who knew what. Keeping secrets amongst ourselves was difficult. But Kate and Ben needed to know, and I wasn’t going to accuse Sierra to her face, so eventually I sent it.
I started looking through the challenges that had come in. We were up to ninety-two. Despite what we had lost to Guskov, we were still probably the richest target in the park.
It didn’t take me long to find one that looked perfect for Kate.
Flight to Danger
On board an aircraft carrying a ticking bomb, you have thirty minutes to identify the bomber and save the passengers. Can you do it?
Kate was great at puzzles like that. I accepted the challenge.
Almost immediately a message popped up:
Fancy a game, Alex?
The Dying Spaceship
Trapped aboard a spaceship being s
ucked into a black hole, can you and your team of marines beat the other team and save the ship? Amy.
This could have been written for Ben. Blasting aliens was the staple diet of the game booths. Ben had played, and won, hundreds of these games. Perfect. It might take a bit of explaining why we had ended up with two challenges, and Ben might not like the fact that the challenger was Amy Bird. But he was, without question, the best in the park at this. I accepted that challenge as well.
Kate/Ben. As I said, we can’t leave yet. We still don’t know for certain what’s happened to Mike, and I’m not abandoning him. So I decided we needed to accept a challenge for the next cycle. We can’t risk another random assignment from ParkGov. However, we have ended up with two. Really sorry about that.
I found the perfect one for Kate, but after I had accepted it I got a much more interesting one – a challenge from Amy Bird [attached]. It’s perfect for you, Ben.
I know it’s not ideal to be playing two games tomorrow, and I appreciate that there is some risk, but we can’t keep running from Bird. This is our chance to get rid of her once and for all. It’s not like Mike’s race, where she could bring in a ringer and beat him. We know that there’s no one better than Ben at this type of game. He will win. That will solve all our problems.
Good luck, friends. Not that you need it. We are going to win this. By the end of the next cycle things will be a lot clearer.
I can’t do much more today. Sierra has fried my brain with alcohol, and there’s only so much I can clear. We need to be on best form tomorrow. Alex.
I cleared the rest of my messages. There was only one of any interest.
Amy Bird detected. Two alerts: view?
The first was a still of the andi on a street close to where Sierra had played her last game. It didn’t tell us anything useful.
The second was much better. It was five minutes later and was taken from a security camera inside a bar. After a couple of seconds the andi entered from the right and crossed over to an occupied table, pulled up a seat and sat down. I zoomed in on the table, and smiled. The angle was from over Bird’s shoulder, her back to the camera, but the figure on the other side of the table was well lit and familiar. It was us – or rather, Sierra. They talked for a few minutes, and then Bird reached over and touched Sierra’s hand.
Kate/Ben, one last thing. See the attached file. This just came in from Ben’s alerts. Check the time stamp – it’s Sierra. Bird reappeared and met up with her in a bar. Indiscreet, but Sierra looks pretty wasted. They clearly know each other, and towards the end briefly hold hands. Not sure if it’s a gesture of intimacy – am I right that Bird is actually Mike? Or does this show that Sierra is controlling Bird, and they were transferring information? Maybe it was Sierra giving Bird her orders. Whatever is going on, it confirms that Sierra and Bird are working together. Do we confront her with it or wait and see where this goes? Let me know what you think. Alex.
It was all starting to unwind for Sierra. You reap what you sow. And Sierra had sown a lot of poisoned seeds.
KATE
DAY FOUR
06:00–11:00
There was a lot to catch up on.
Ben had had a close shave with Guskov, the drug dealer, or, as he had discovered, the andi dealer. He had done well to get us out of there alive. I was annoyed that he had lost ten of the years I had won, but better that than real death. He’d discovered something important, though – one of us had bought the andi, Bird. Why?
We had ended up with a challenge being forced on us by ParkGov. I didn’t understand how that could have happened. Surprisingly, Sierra had then stepped up and saved the day.
Alex had decided we ought to stay, but seemed to have messed up and accepted two challenges, one for me and one for Ben. Added to which, Ben’s challenge came from Amy Bird, whom I didn’t trust at all. But if we didn’t play, we forfeited.
Alex was speculating that Bird might be Mike, who had downloaded into the andi. That sounded very far-fetched, and probably impossible. Admittedly, Bird had told me that she had found someone who knew a way of transferring her mind to us and then back again to a different andi body. But Bird had lied to me about many things, so that didn’t mean much.
Still, it was worth considering Alex’s theory. I preferred to think that Mike was still alive somewhere – even in an andi body – than that he had gone for good. Maybe we could retrieve him.
I ran a search while I read the rest of my messages.
Alex’s last message was the most important. It showed Sierra and Bird together in a bar, clearly familiar with one another. I had been trying to keep an open mind, but this seemed to confirm our worst fears. Sierra was up to something. Maybe on her own, maybe with Mike. I ran the image clip a second time, carefully studying Bird in light of Alex’s theory. Could that be Mike in Bird’s body? There was definitely something intimate in the way they touched. But Sierra acted like that with most people. Or was Sierra controlling Bird in some way? Had we caught her giving Bird instructions?
The results of my search came back. I didn’t have time to read them all, but the most promising was a CGov research paper entitled ‘The Transfer of Communal Minds to Human/Android Bodies’. I opened it and read the summary.
The first generation of communal bodies gave rise to unanticipated problems. Although the science worked flawlessly, certain psychological difficulties had not been foreseen. A significant minority of commune members regretted their decisions or irretrievably fell out with other members. This led to experiments into whether it was possible to unwind a commune.
Attempts to reverse mind transfers met with mixed results. Out of 412 such procedures, 258 resulted in cognitive damage ranging from catatonia to mild psychosis. Six resulted in death to the entire commune.
In five cases the bodies from which the minds had originally been transferred remained available. In all five cases the unwinding of the commune was successful.
In the remaining 407 cases the original bodies had been disposed of, and the re-transfer was to other bodies (205) or to androids (202). Transfers to android bodies were overwhelmingly more successful (56.5 per cent success rate) than transfers to human bodies (17.1 per cent success rate).
Nevertheless, the high failure rate for both resulted in the programme being shut down, and the option to unwind communes was withdrawn.
This paper explores the reasons for the failure of the programme, and considers whether recent medical improvements could lower the risks of mind transfer from communes to android or human bodies.
We conclude that modern techniques and medicines mean that the risks of transfer could significantly be improved, particularly in respect of transfers to android bodies, where we calculate a potential success rate of up to 92 per cent.
It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider the ethical question of whether reversal should be offered until the success rate has risen to 100 per cent.
I didn’t have time to read the full paper, and it probably wouldn’t have made much sense to me anyway. However, this did suggest that some of what Bird had told me might have been true. Maybe Alex’s theory as to what had happened to Mike wasn’t so far-fetched after all. Although even if it was possible, that didn’t explain why Mike or Sierra would have done this.
I was going to have to leave it till later. My challenge was at 8:00. My mind was racing and I needed to calm down. I had time for a walk and some food before going to the arena.
•
Welcome, Ms Weston
Game:
Flight to Danger
Objective:
Find the bomb
Stages:
One
Location:
39,000 feet
There are five players and 32.3 years at stake. You will not be interacting with other players, but each of you will be faced with the same scenario. The survivor, or survivors, will share the time of those who lose.
To preserve game integrity, any attempt to record events or
retain memories will lead to an immediate forfeit.
Mandatory CGov Advisory: Please be aware that you are engaging in a simulation. Flying in the era in which this game is set was, and still remains, one of the most environmentally damaging human activities possible.
•
‘Welcome on board, Ms Weston. You are in 3A. Let me show you to your seat.’
The stewardess shows me into the first-class cabin. It is small, with only twelve seats. Mine is at the rear on the left-hand side.
‘May I get you a glass of champagne?’ asks the stewardess.
I remember that I am here to win a game, not enjoy myself. ‘No thanks.’
‘Very well, I will leave you to settle in.’
I sit down.
After a few minutes the aircraft begins to move. Five minutes later we are in the air.
The screen in front of me lights up.
Ms Weston, this is a message from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. Please do not be alarmed. Do not leave your seat until we have fully briefed you. Be careful in your interaction with other passengers.
We have received information that a bomb has been smuggled on board your aircraft. We believe that it is being carried by one of the first-class passengers. We have been able conclusively to eliminate you from suspicion. We need your help.
Any attempt to search the passengers’ luggage is likely to prompt the unknown subject to trigger the bomb. Any change of course or other unusual activity on the part of crew may do the same.
We have been able to obtain limited information on each of the passengers under suspicion, which will be sent to you.
Our informant tells us that the bomb is set to explode thirty minutes from now. Once you have located the bomb please take custody of it. If you choose incorrectly it is likely to alert the unsub and result in early detonation.
