Halting State

do but listen to Michaels’s pitch?

Michaels leads you down an alley-way, across a main road, and into a gloomy-looking pub built into what looks to have been a mediaeval dungeon—all vaulted stone archways a metre and a half high, complete with blackened oak barrels wearing restaurant-drag table-tops. There are TV screens everywhere, as if trying to deny the essentially antediluvian origins of the place, but they can’t cover up the pervasive smell of rising damp. “The cooked breakfast here is really quite good,” Michaels asserts, “very twentieth-century Scottish.”

You let yourself be steered into ordering the cooked breakfast. You’re a good girl and you take your prophylactic statins every evening religiously: Saturated fats can hold no fear for you, at least in moderation and followed by a penance of tossed green salad.

“We should be secure in here,” Michaels explains over the top of the menu: “The walls are three feet thick and made of solid stone. People used to avoid the place—they couldn’t get a phone signal inside, and installing wifi was pointless—until a particularly bright landlord figured out she could make money by pitching it as a stuckist hangout.” And indeed when you look at your phone you see you’ve got zero bars of signal, even though you’re within sight of a window looking out onto the canyonlike depths of the Cowgate.

“So you wanted to tenderize us before breakfast.” Jack leans back against the bare stone wall. “Was that what that little piece of Grand Guignol back at the mortuary was all about, then?”

Michaels has the decency to look abashed. “That’s a bit unfair.”

“Really?” You glare at him. “The police roust us out of bed to come and view a body, and you just happen to be passing? Pull the other one!”

Michaels picks up a fork and stabs it in your direction: “Next you’ll be accusing me of murdering poor Wayne. Can you get it through your thick head that it’s not about you?”

“If it’s not about us, then who killed Wayne?” asks Jack.

Michaels frowns. “I wish I knew,” he mutters, shoving his unruly forelock back into place. “Oh, I mean it was clearly Team Red who did it—but the why of it is another matter.”

Jack tenses. “I heard something,” he says, reluctantly.

“Yes?” Michaels raises an eyebrow.

“When I was working late. Day before yesterday.”

You feel like shaking him. “What did you—” Michaels holds up a hand.

“I was on my way out, about elevenish. Most of the lights were out. I heard a couple of voices arguing in one of the meeting rooms. One of them was—I’m pretty sure of this—Wayne Richardson.” He winces. “I don’t know who the other was. Male, that’s all. I thought you might know.”

Michaels is looking at Jack incredulously. “You don’t know who it was?”

“No.” Jack looks frustrated. “It’s rude to listen at doors, did you know that…?”

You bite your lower lip. It would not do to giggle at this point, they’d both get entirely the wrong idea about you, and that would be a mistake. Poor Jack: too honest for his own good. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

“Oh Jesus fucking Christ,” Michaels says disgustedly. “You thought it was me?”

Jack just sits there, looking defensive.

“Well, why didn’t you say so before?” Michaels demands.

This has gone far enough. “Stop that!” you tell him. “Jack had no good reason to trust you, yesterday.” You’re not sure he has any reason to do so today, either. You take a stab in the dark. “Why should we trust you?”

Michaels is about to say something, but Jack beats him to it. “Someone’s penetrated your operation,” he says, remarkably calmly. “And you don’t know who. They were working with Wayne, weren’t they?”

“Go on.” Michaels rolls with the punch.

Jack swallows. “Let’s start with, who is Nigel MacDonald a cover for?” When Michaels doesn’t respond, he raises an eyebrow. “Well?”

Michaels shakes his head pensively. “There used to be an old joke in role-playing circles—it isn’t funny, these days—that there were only a thousand real people in the UK—everybody else was a non-player character. Now it’s pretty much the reverse.”

That’s worth blinking at. You can’t quite picture the urbane establishment-issue Barry Michaels as a spotty teenage D#amp#Der, but it would explain his current position, wouldn’t it? SPOOKS has got to have taken years to develop—it’s clearly a long-term project—which implies funding and pilot projects and all sorts of R#amp#D behind it.

“Nigel MacDonald was a useful sock-puppet for the SPOOKS development group at CESG,” he says slowly. “He was there so they could interact with the staff quants without tipping them off that they were actually talking to various people inside the Doughnut.”

“The Doughnut?”

“Cheltenham.” He frowns. “So we had this telecommuter on the payroll. Wayne tapped me on the shoulder about him a year ago when he realized Nigel didn’t actually live anywhere—he figured there was a payroll scam going on. So I rolled out the cover story and told Wayne to play along.”

Jack nods thoughtfully. “What’s the cover?” He sounds resigned, almost as if he can guess what’s coming.

“Hayek Associates play by the rules—officially.” Michaels bares his teeth, briefly. “We don’t have a dirty-tricks department, officially.”

“Ah.” Jack looks satisfied, but you’re anything but. “What kind of dirty tricks?” you demand.

“The industry—the games biz—has a habit of playing dirty. Keeping players happy is all about fun, isn’t it?” says Michaels. “So by extension, a tool that can tweak how much fun you’re having in a given game can also…”

“He’s talking about sabotage tools,” Jack cuts in. He gives Michaels a hard look. “That was your story for Wayne?”

Michaels nods. “Yes, basically. If we ever had to do anything deniable, we wanted a scapegoat to pin it on.”

“What did Wayne do after you told him that?” Jacks asks.

“He played along.” Michaels looks thoughtful. “He suggested we flesh out the role, actually. Rent a flat, pay the bills, work up a credit history, so we’d have something to look shocked about if anyone ever started digging.” He looks straight at you: “When the police broke down the MacDonald residence door and found a blacknet node, that was a shock. But by that point the cover story was out, so it could have been anyone at Hayek Associates, really. But that”—he nods at Jack, with an expression something like respect—“is when we realized we had a real problem. Now we know that part of the problem was Wayne. The question is, who else is involved?”

You swallow. It’s time to lay some cards of your own on the table. “I don’t like this game, Barry. I came up here to audit a bank, not identify murder victims.” (Or be abducted by kamikaze taxis, or conscripted by the secret service.) “I’m not cut out for this, and neither is Jack.”

“Really? I’d never have guessed,” he snarks at you. “Before you get on your high horse, I’d like to say that you’re absolutely wrong about that last bit. You’re here because you’re both graduates of an extensive training course. Only you didn’t see it as training, you paid to subscribe to it; it’s the difference between work and play, nothing more. You’re complaining now because something you used to do for fun turns out to be a paying career—”

“Paying?” Jack asks sharply.

“Who the hell do you think is footing the bill for the contract you gouged out of CapG?” Michaels raises an eyebrow. “It wasn’t just the stuff you listed on your CV, Jack. We know about the other. The tools. You’ve got exactly what we need for this job.” Then he turns to you: “You also, even though three- quarters of what we’re paying for your services is going into Dietrich-Brunner’s coffers—you’d do better to go freelance.” While you’re gasping indignantly, he adds, “I’m not going to make the mistake of appealing to your patriotism: It’s a deflating currency these days, and an ambiguous one. But I would like to put a word in for ethics, fair play, and enlightened self-interest. It’s not good for any of us to let Team Red run around hijacking certain, ah, critical systems—and killing people.” (He’s clearly got something in mind other than Avalon Four or the Zonespace game platform, and you find his fastidious reluctance to name things extremely