The Gobo Bride: A Lewis Gregory Mystery

by Mason Adgett

  Behavior enforcement allowed Lewis and Charles to feef about it regularly on Fefe and the public was all over it. The case was a trending topic on no less than three planets. By the end of the episode Lewis and Earth behavior enforcement had narrowed the list down to around ten names which, to protect the case, they did not reveal. No doubt Boldt's had been on it. I would have to ask Charles for the details later.

  After the episode I re-opened my news feed but a few minutes later realized I wasn't paying any attention. Headscenes were flying by and I hadn't clicked on any of them. I was restless but bored, tense, and I needed a distraction. So like everyone else at such times I patted on the LashLenses and turned on Galactic Empires.

  I probably play less than most people, I guess, but I still play a lot. My Galactic Empires module was pretty much the center of my social hub as I imagined it was with pretty much all of known space. India’s decision to marry someone she had only met on the gaming platform wasn’t that unusual. At its best the module was a magnificent cultural lubricant and I had on my buddy list more than my share of alien “friends,” entities I had played with more than once or twice and enjoyed the interaction. I couldn’t see myself romantically involved with one, don’t get me wrong, but that was just my own personal make-up. Everyone, human or alien, is different.

  But when I turned on the module this time I found I was thinking not of friends but of the Boldts and Kantskys of the world – people who used such things as tools for their own selfish gain. I imagine everyone had a little bit of a stalker in them, found themselves from time to time searching out what games particular people were playing, maybe spectating silently and watching them play from the sidelines, and while this was certainly a little on the creepy side (depending on how deeply it went), it was the hacking, the secret criminal invasion into our lives that was so abhorrent. These people turned a platform meant for people’s enjoyment and amusement into something corrupt, untrustworthy, and therefore ultimately frightening.

  Here I was turning it on to escape my restless thoughts and instead it only added to them. Was this the goal of evil in the end, to take from us every pleasure, no matter how mundane?

  I tried to shake it off. My buddy list had ten active players and I saw Charles was one of them. When I clicked on his profile I saw he was in Cosmic B-Ball but hadn’t started a game.

  That seemed perfect. I dinged him and he invited me in to his court right away. He had it set to classic standard simulation because that’s how he liked to show off best. He was playing as himself – no surprise as his inclusion in the game fed his vanity. I had been forced like all average people to create myself from scratch but I never played as myself anyway. This time I chose the legendary Buster Blell, one of the greatest shooters of all time, which wouldn’t help much as I had the play set to “true,” but more importantly he was six foot five while I myself was a lowly five seven. (Also I had nearly achieved level ten on his character card which unlocked quite a few “Diamond” extras that I wasn’t about to pay real money for in the store.)

  When we played real b-ball, which we did very occasionally, I had a slim chance of beating Charles only because with my speed I could take some advantage of his bum knee. Titanium was strong but slowed him down a lot. In the online game where he got to use his All-Star body from years ago I couldn’t hope to keep up. After he demolished me a couple times in standard 21, I switched to arcade mode and started lighting it up with Buster’s trademark quick release and stole a game. Charles complained about arcade mode but I wanted to go even farther. “You never play with any of the fun mods,” I said. “You need to come back to my gym and play BattleBall.” BattleBall added weapons and powers to the traditional B-Ball and before we left for Asitot had been eating up too much of my free time.

  Charles agreed to try it and we switched over to my gym. I had to wait on him to customize his power set. Meanwhile we talked, which we hadn’t done much of during the first few games. I told him some of my experiences in Kantsky’s psycho ward. He described how they had found Boldt, who it turned out had been a programmer for Ultra Virtua, the company that created Galactic Empires. Charles had gotten into Ultra Virtua to ask around and found out Boldt had been fired over a year ago for making his own modifications to game code. Before that he had been considered talented but with a reputation for weird.

  Boldt’s name on the list of India’s gaming history combined with his past work as a programmer was enough for behavior enforcement, at Charles’ urging, to get a warrant to locate. The next time he logged on they tracked him to an abandoned Earth orbital station that had once been a part of Ultra Virtua’s network.

  That’s where they found him, along with me and India. How he had gotten us back to the solar system was a mystery. Presumably he took us through the Space Machine unregistered but they were still searching video logs to find out how it had been accomplished.

  Boldt so far was not talking.

  “I’ve also got something to show you about Vavaka,” Charles said mysteriously.

  “What?” I said. “Just tell me.”

  “Paper only,” he said. “Information I’m not supposed to have.” He touched his finger to his lips in a hush-hush fashion. “I’ll bring it over later,” he said. “Unless you want to come by my pad instead.”

  “Sure,” I said, since I hadn’t been to see his cat Max in a while. But while he worked on his build I mulled over it, wondering what might be so sensitive he wouldn’t want to bring it up inside the game. It made me a little paranoid he thought people might be listening. The game was set – per my request – to private mode. Supposedly that meant no viewers. But maybe he was just being careful given the disclaimer on the game allowed for monitoring by behavior enforcement in some criminal cases.

  He finished setting up – he had chosen a juggernaut build, my own set was trickster – and we started a game of 25 or Death. I didn’t go for the kill much though, just for baskets, just to keep it a little closer to the original game. Besides I could tell Charles was getting frustrated right from the get-go, since a juggernaut took some experience to use effectively and Charles had never played the mod. I scored thrice – twice with the same mirage power – before Charles was able to get his first bucket, a slam dunk rocket-blasted from half-court. He blocked my three point attempt with the same power but then my invisibility opened up and I was able to steal it back and gave him a little underhanded slice in the ribs just for good measure, not so much for the damage as to reduce his speed a little bit. After that it was full-out assault mode and he had a half-authentic glare when we finished, 25-11 and me still with almost full health.

  “Violence doesn’t belong in basketball,” he said.

  “You mean weapons,” I argued. “There’s always been a little violence in basketball.”

  “You were distracted at the end,” he said. “Still are. What got you?”

  I shrugged. “Just thinking about the last few days,” I said, but it wasn’t that. I had never stopped thinking about it, it just wasn’t the distraction Charles was talking about. Halfway through the game a notification had caught my eye. Notifications happen all the time. Usually I barely register them but this one had India’s name attached. Apparently she had added me as a friend. I had been fiddling with the menu, trying to see what she was up to, hoping Charles wouldn’t notice. I left it for later. “Another game?” I said. “I could use it, to take my mind off.”

  “You mean this stupid BattleBall?” he groaned.

  “We can play classic,” I said.

  “No, it’s fine, it’s your house. Just let me take a second to change my powers.”

  I beat him twice more before he called it a day and only then did I go back to my tray to accept India’s friend request and check out her profile. Personally I like to keep most of my numbers to myself. Some people let you see everything they do on the module even if they’re not your friends. Last game they played, last question they asked Wikiman, last time they logged out of
the system (for some people that could be months, even years), last game or add-on they bought and what they paid for it. Maybe I’m weird but I didn’t think even my friends needed to know these things. The only thing you could see on my account was my username and my online status was need-to-know.

  India was not quite as firewalled but being a celebrity her profile was at least a little limited. To the public it was private but for her friends she had shared a few clips, none very recently, and I could see she was online. I put her on my need to know list so she could see I was available and started to send a message. But I couldn’t think of anything to say and as a rule I don’t much care for the random emote.

  Instead I played a solo game of Floating Dragon – a supercharged martial arts game – against bots and waited to see if she would contact me. I was almost certain she would. I didn’t know how I knew this. But it took her only two minutes.

  Her message wasn’t quite an emote but was equally cryptic: “?”

  Instead of replying I exited to my game lounge and invited her in. I was not quite myself but I was pretty close. I was sporting long hair and a beard, a funny style I had recently achieved in a pirate game, but the rest of me came straight from a body scan. Given I hadn’t updated it in over a month.

  India on the other hand was completely herself – absolutely stunning in just a loose silk shirt and jeans – except for her eyes which still had that haunted look and her body language which lacked her usual flamboyant flair.

  “You look good like that,” she said. “Hair suits you.” I pulled gently at my beard, unable to decide if she was being serious.

  “You want to try it?” I said. “As long as you’re in my lounge you can try out my styles.”

  She laughed but it had no humor in it. “I’ve tried it. Wasn’t my look.” She looked like she was about to say something else, then didn’t, and we just stood looking at each other for a moment, reading each other’s expressions. I assumed she like myself was set for true capture, but it wasn’t quite true – the game had a tendency to exaggerate things slightly, expand the dynamics a bit, which gave even the simplest of looks a bit of melodrama. Other than that it was much like looking at the real India. It was only the edges of the game that pixelated, the peripherals, the things you weren’t looking at.

  “Your pad is cute,” she finally said. “Cute” was exactly the right word, since I currently had it set to a Baby Monsters theme with cartoon style furniture and a plush fur rug with a Gobbler face. His toothy grin and buggy eyes followed you around the room. “We don’t have to play a game if you don’t want to,” she said. “I was just hoping I would catch you on here.”

  “Up to you,” I said. She shrugged, smiled like it didn’t matter. I urged her to sit on the Baby GhoulWorm couch, a soft blue thing that was incredibly comfortable but very small, made to seat young children.

  “I’m a little big for that,” she said but I grinned and waved her over to it. I had it set so as she sat down her body shrank down to the size of a child, so when she was sitting she was the perfect size for the couch.

  She laughed and I was pleased to see a real sparkle this time. “Come sit with me,” she said. “There’s plenty of room.”

  I did, a silly smile on my face, feeling a bit like an actual child as I shrank down to the size of one.

  “I call it my Alice couch,” I said, and was pleased when she got the reference.

  “Alice in Wonderland,” she said. “Do you have one that makes you grow big too?”

  “I have a chair,” I said, “but it’s an ugly wooden thing from some forest giant theme. It’s not nearly as nice.”

  “Yes,” she said, leaning back into its soft rolls. “I like this. I’m going to get me one of these.”

  “You can’t,” I said. “Limited release, special edition from a tournament. You can’t even buy it.”

  “We’ll see if I can’t,” she said, smirking.

  “Anyway,” I said, “it’s the whole reason I went with the Baby Monsters theme, just for the Alice couch.”

  “I love it,” she said. Then I watched the smile fade from her face and her eyes drop to the floor. For just a few seconds she had been the old India again but now it was gone. I felt the lack immediately and wondered how I could have judged her so harshly before. Maybe she had been naïve, self-centered and shallow, but how had I missed the infectious light she carried in that smile? Now thoughts moved across her face like dark shadows in deep waters.

  I said, “What’s going on with us?” I wasn’t even sure what I meant by the question and the quick glance she shot my way was equally confused. She stood up, returning to her normal size, and took a few steps away from me.

  “He killed you,” she said finally. “I’ve never seen someone die before.”

  “Kantsky,” I said, and she frowned at me.

  “The assistant?” she said.

  “Assistant?” I repeated. “In my time with Boldt he called himself Kantsky.”

  She said, “In mine he was Boldt but he had an assistant named Kantsky. He would tell him what to do… ‘Kantsky, re-calibrate the settings. Kantsky, apply the solution. Kantsky, begin the procedure.’” She shivered, her face a mask of revulsion. “But Kantsky never said anything, he just did what he was told.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” I asked. “Everything he did to you?”

  She looked unsure for a second, then shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s play a game.”

  We found something neither of us had ever played before, a puzzle game mixed with a strategic war element that I really thought I would kick India’s tail in but it turned out to be the other way around. We took turns drawing cards with land, buildings, roads, armies, things like that, and gradually built up civilizations to attack each other. India not only got lucky with the card draws but she was just a little more aggressive than me and had a knack for anticipating my strategies and breaking them up before completion.

  In the end I suffered a very bloody defeat and my entire civilization was annihilated. Surprising.

  By then we were both wondering why we had chosen such a violent game but agreed it had emphasized the strategy side before you went in. It wasn’t until the first war that you realized how gruesome they had made the environment. Our one game took a little over an hour. Then India had to go.

  “Vavaka,” she said. “He’s online.”

  I felt a stab in my gut and with a sinking feeling realized it was jealousy. “I’m glad he’s taking care of you,” I said, trying to mask it. I felt like she could see right through me.

  “Yeah,” she said. “He’s still on Asitot.”

  I didn’t comment on that, though I wanted to. Instead I just said, “I had a good time.”

  “We’ve postponed the wedding,” she said abruptly. “He wants to make sure I have time to recover.”

  “Charles told me,” I said. “Nothing wrong with a long engagement.”

  “Come see me,” she said. “For real, okay?”

  After we disconnected I logged off of Galactic Empires, suddenly depressed. I had enjoyed myself both with Charles and then India but now I felt the other end of that as a crashing wave of weary sadness. It was unlike me. Though a bit on the cynical side I was normally upbeat and didn’t let things bother me. I hoped Boldt hadn’t done permanent damage to my outlook.

  I went back to my news feed and got a jolt when I saw my own face – my name above it – on one of the headscenes. Of course I clicked it but almost everything in it I already knew. India Phoenix and myself kidnapped, nearly murdered, the madman captured – nice clip of Charles there – and suspected to be a member of the Alliance Against Civilization. This was the first I had heard that officially but I knew it was coming. It was most likely true from the way Kantsky had talked but almost every violent criminal was suspected of being a member of the Alliance unless they could prove otherwise. Being a member of the Alliance meant immediate exterminat
ion, whereas if your uncivilized behavior was merely a deviation from core civilized values there might be hope of rehabilitation, if not on Earth then on one of the first-galaxy planets that specialized in behavior modification.

  The people of Earth didn’t really like to acknowledge their status as a third-galaxy system – it really didn’t come up much in day to day life – but on third-galaxy systems there was really very little tolerance for deviation, especially when manifested as actual violence. Simulated violence was fine, which always struck me as odd, but hey, I didn’t make the rules. First-galaxy planets did. Anderson Gehrzhaur – an earthling – had seen to our acceptance into Galactic Civilization by activating the long dormant Space Machine, but they still thought we were pretty backward, far more so than the fully adapted “first-galaxy” planets as they were commonly called in anglish. We were primitive and still needed a lot of adjustment. To some of them we were viewed as little more than animals.

  Boldt was featured in several of the stories with people like Krumb demanding his immediate extermination and asking questions like why should a member of the Alliance even get the benefit of a civilized trial? There was also background on Boldt, but it was just a list of facts empty of the human element. Born on Earth, adopted by a gobo couple as a child and taken back to Asitot. Two years later when the couple disappeared on vacation Boldt ended up being raised in a civilization support center. Gifted programmer, hired by Ultra Virtua at the age of nineteen. A part of the team that spearheaded the latest update which everyone agreed had improved immersion tenfold. Then fired for taking too much freedom with his code – judged variant but non-malicious so until the kidnapping he had not been flagged as a potential terrorist. He was hardly the only programmer to be let go for being too individualized. Only one of the articles mentioned a suspected identity confusion disorder, which I assumed referred to what Charles had told me, that he thought himself to be a gobo.