Halting State

“You’re the plan: all of you.” He grins quickly. You glance around the table, seeing surprised faces: Faye, Mohammed, Fred, Brendan. The only person who’s nodding is Margaret, an indicator that speaks volumes. “We’re going up there tonight on the sleeper train. Jessica’s booking rooms and a secure conference suite for us in the West End Malmaison. I expect we’ll be there for about a week, so pack your bags accordingly. I’ve taken the liberty of clearing your schedules as this is now our number one priority.” He looks directly at you, and you raise an eyebrow. “Yes, Elaine, you’re off the Croatia job. Any questions?”

Mohammed, diffidently: “It’s Friday…”

“I know.” Chris looks as if he’s bitten a lemon. “But the police are already in attendance. We can’t barge in and expect anyone to give us the time of day right now. Monday is another matter, so we’re going up there tonight. You’ve got Saturday to decompress, and Sunday we’ll hold a planning session so that when we go in mob-handed on Monday morning, we’ve got some idea what we’re doing.” He pauses. “By the way, you’re all free to go home after this meeting. You’ll be needing time to make appropriate arrangements.”

“What are we going up there for?” you ask. “I mean, what can’t we do from down here?”

“She’s right,” Mohammed agrees. He glances at you nervously.

“I don’t see why you need me,” Brendan adds waspishly. “Scotland’s got a different legal system. I’m not qualified to practice up there.”

“Hayek Associates are incorporated in London, under English law,” says Faye. “Isn’t that right?” She looks unnaturally pleased with herself.

“That’s right,” says Chris. To Mohammed, with a shy grin: “There’s no escape!”

You can’t help yourself: “But I still don’t see why we need to be there in person.”

Chris screws up his face and opens his mouth, but Margaret gets there first. “If I may?” she asks.

Chris nods.

“This doesn’t happen very often.” Margaret’s lips are as thin as a black line on a balance sheet. “I know what you’re thinking, Elaine. Usually we don’t need direct access. The trouble is, usually we’re looking for inconsistencies in the audit trail.” She glances at Chris to back her up. He nods thoughtfully. “Normally we have a good idea whether the data we’re being supplied with is sane: We’re looking for someone siphoning assets out through the backdoor, but we’re pretty sure the building exists in the first place.”

Chris nods again. “But I’m told this breach took place in, in a game.” He glances at Margaret. “I’m still trying to work out the implications,” he admits. You shiver, as it becomes apparent: Chris and Margaret don’t have a clue what they’re doing! They’re trying to work it out from first principles. Which means this really is something unusual. “We don’t know whether there even is an audit trail. Or what an imaginary bank robbery in a virtual space means to our client. That’s what we’re going up there to establish.”

“So why are you dragging Faye and Brendan along?” you ask.

Margaret snorts. “To figure out whether we were sold a bill of goods by Hayek’s board. Chris doesn’t want to lose the TI account. Or Lloyds,” she adds pointedly.

Oh. “You think they’re going to be unfriendly?”

“I’m certain of it,” Chris says gloomily. “If this goes wrong, we could be looking at a catastrophic loss of goodwill, not to mention the Avixa account.” Avixa is a really big contract that’s too damn similar to TI for comfort. “So the plan is, we turn up unannounced on Monday.” He nods at Brendan. “Gene is drawing up an application for an Anton Pillar order”—he still uses the old term for a court search order—“and a freezing injunction behind it, which we’ll be serving on our arrival, I hope. Mohammed, you’re familiar with HA’s business structure and accounting procedures; we’re going to go over them with a nit comb. Margaret, Fred, and Faye will tackle business work flow, managerial competence, and anything else that springs to mind. Brendan, you’re there to serve the orders and liaise with our Scottish counsel if necessary. Keep our toe in the door. Elaine, Margaret tells me you’ve got some background in gaming. The asset loss took place inside a game supervised by Hayek Associates. I want you to go in and audit the bank inside the game. Can you do that?”

Your mind goes blank. It’s like one of those horrible nightmares, turning up late at school to sit an exam in a subject you haven’t been studying for and finding you’re the only person wearing clothes because everyone else is naked—“You want me to what?”

“Bank robbery inside an online game. Banks have accounts. Robberies leave a forensic trail. Yes?”

You blink stupidly for a few seconds. “Yes, I…see. I think.” He glances away, obviously ready to proceed to the next item on his agenda, so you raise an uncertain hand. “I think you got the wrong end of the stick,” you say hesitantly. “This is an online game, right?”

It’s Chris’s turn to blink. Did he think you were some kind of game wiz? “Well, yes. Why?”

“I’ll need an interpreter,” you explain. “I don’t know as much about this stuff as I’m going to need to know”—no point saying you know nothing at all, that wouldn’t be constructive, and it’s being constructive under pressure that gets you promoted to partner, although seeing what that Stepford-esque process does to people over the past couple of years has taken the sheen off it—“and you said their head programmer has gone missing. Is he a suspect?”

“I wouldn’t want to prejudice your investigation,” Margaret says with a funny little smile. “Draw your own conclusions.”

“Well then.” You smile right back at her. Bingo. They think the programmer did it. Which means it’s probably an inside job, a crime inside a game. Whoopee. “Well, let’s pull this missing guy’s CV and hire someone just like him so I’ve got a native guide. A gamekeeper to find the poacher. Right?”

“Right.” Chris nods, slowly. Then he makes a note on his pad. “I’ll tell Jessica to get onto CapG right away about matching a body to that skill set. I’m sure there was something about him in the pre-IPO filing. CapG should have—or be able to find—somebody on contract if we light a fire under them. Happy?”

You nod. “Yes.” If you’re getting a gamekeeper to guide you through the undergrowth, you’re not being set up to take the fall. Which is good to know because you were getting anxious there for a minute.

“That’s settled, then.” Chris momentarily forgets to look worried. “Any other questions?”

JACK: mouth —> insert(foot);

By daybreak on Monday morning you are no longer in Amsterdam or hung-over, but you are still unemployed. It’s already light when you stumble downstairs, scrubbing at your face with the shaver (hard enough to raise welts—it needs a recharge), to spoon half-stale coffee into the filter cone. It’s the Big Day today, but your sole interview-worthy suit is three years out of fashion, none of your shirts are ironed (or made of fabric with no-wrinkle, for that matter), and your one-and-only tie has somehow acquired a big brown beer-stain while lurking at the back of the sock drawer. Sod it. You ask yourself: Am I that desperate yet? Well yes, maybe you will be: But this is only day one of your unemployed life, business is booming, the recruiters know you’re a techie, and if the interviews go badly, you can hit up your credit card for a new outfit afterwards. So you pull a not-too-stinky black tee out of the washer/dryer, round up yesterday’s jeans, and slop UHT and sugar into the chipped Microsoft Office mug on the kitchen work-top as you try to wake up. Then, just as you’re thinking about hitting the job boards, the phone rings.

“Hello? Is that Jack Reed? This is Mandy from AlfaGuru. You posted that you were available on Thursday? We’ve had a job opening come up, and I wonder if you’d like to interview for it—”

Thirty minutes later you’ve done a quick change into your interview suit and you’re walking along parking- choked Glenogle Road, heading towards the bus stops and picturesque boutiques on Queensferry Road. You’ve dumped all your usual game-space overlays except for Google Local and Microsoft RouteMaster, and the sky is stark and clear above you; the ghost world is almost empty but for the crawling trail of an airliner outbound towards North America, and a twirling red tag tracking your bus across the city towards you.

Replaying the call from Mandy at AlfaGuru is almost enough to get you into a work-a-day frame of mind again. Mandy says the assignment’s to do with some kind of insurance-agency work and lists a skill set that matches yours. This comes as a big surprise. Since when do the finance industries code their payroll runs in Python