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CHAPTER FIFTEEN



Isaac and Susan took their seats in the CFPD conference room opposite Ergon, who’d recently transmitted over from Earth via connectome laser. His avatar took the form of a dark, spherical void with hot, swirling matter falling into it. He floated on the other side of the table, expressionless without a face or body.

“Thank you for agreeing to speak with us on such short notice,” Isaac said. “I’m Detective Cho, and this is my deputy, Agent Cantrell.”

“Hmm?” Ergon murmured in a vaguely male tone of voice. The dark void remained motionless except for the constant swirling motion. It didn’t even bob up and down.

“I said—”

“I heard you.”

Isaac blinked at the abrupt reply.

“Yes, well,” he said, recovering, “we have a few questions we’d like to ask you.”

“Hmm?”

“First, I’d like to confirm a few facts. Would you please state your name and occupation for the rec—”

“This room is tiny.”

“I’m sorry?” Isaac asked.

“This room,” Ergon repeated. “Is tiny.”

Isaac turned to Susan, who shrugged. He then made a show of looking around the room.

“It doesn’t seem tiny to me.”

“Could you adjust the scale, please?”

“The scale?”

“Yes.”

“What scale?”

“Of the room.”

“I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I feel cramped in here. It’s making me uncomfortable. Please make the room bigger.”

“You feel cramped?” Isaac asked skeptically.

“Mmhmm.”

“But you’re an AC.”

“Hmm?”

“You don’t take up any space.”

“Yes, I do. My avatar has a radius of twelve million kilometers.”

“I’m afraid we don’t have a room that big.”

“But it’s so cramped in here. I had to shrink my avatar down to fit inside. It’s quite awkward, you see. Can’t you change the scale?”

“No, I can’t change the room’s scale. It’s fixed by this thing called reality.”

“Mmm,” Ergon murmured. “Mind if I fix it then?”

“I…” Isaac let out a slow exhale. “You’re welcome to try.”

“Thanks.”

An invite to an abstraction blinked in Isaac’s virtual sight.

“Done. I’ll meet you inside,” Ergon said, and vanished.

“What an unusual fellow,” Susan commented.

“Let’s just go along with this.” Isaac allowed the abstraction to unfold around him, only to discover it was a one-to-one replica of the conference room. Out of curiosity, he checked the dimensions, and found the virtual room to be over a hundred million kilometers long. He waved his hand in front of his face and saw the action instantly, which told him the speed of light was not being obeyed in this simulation.

“Much better!” Ergon declared.

“How often do you leave the abstract?” Isaac said.

“Why do you ask?”

“Professional curiosity.”

“Not much. I try to avoid the physical whenever possible.”

“I see.” Isaac opened his notes, which now measured millions of kilometers across but looked exactly the same to him. “Now, Ergon, you’re the owner of Unreality Disconnect, is that right?”

“Mmhmm.”

“And you’re also the lead programmer for Weltall, correct?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Did you send an updated version of Weltall to Sven Kohlberg yesterday?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry. Are you asking me something? Or are you confused by the question? I can’t tell.”

“Hmm.”

“That’s not an answer.”

The dark swirl floated behind the table, unresponsive.

“Here, let me handle this.” Cephalie appeared on the table and walked over to the dark void. “Hey, Ergon!” she shouted.

“Hmm?”

Cephalie pointed at Isaac and Susan. “They’re curious about your new game!”

The dark void burst with light so intense Isaac squinted and flinched back.

“Why didn’t you say so?” Ergon declared, his radiant aura pulsating with excitement. “I’m always happy to converse with fans!”

“Yes. Sure,” Isaac said, shielding his eyes with a hand. “We’re fans. Now would you please answer our questions?”

“Certainly! What would you like to know?”

Isaac was about to speak up, but Susan cleared her throat. He shot her a quick glance, saw she was silently asking to take the lead. He gestured with an open hand for her to proceed.

“Mister Ergon,” Susan began.

“Please, just Ergon, if you don’t mind. It’s short for Ergosphere. Mister Ergon sounds so pretentious.”

“Of course. I was curious about a mechanic that seems to be missing from your game.”

“A missing mechanic?” The swirl pulsed more rapidly for a few moments. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve noticed that Weltall utilizes real-world physics for most of its gameplay fundamentals, but one branch of physics doesn’t seem to be represented at all.”

“Ah! I think I see where you’re going with this.”

“You give the player access to a wide range of methods to manipulate the matter and energy in the game space. They can build all sorts of structures and vessels to accomplish this, but the one thing they can’t do is travel through time or visit other universes. Why is that?”

“Oh, how very astute of you!” Ergon commended. “Yes, that was a problem we didn’t know we’d face during the game’s development. You see, we’ve been working on Weltall for over four years now, long before anyone knew about transdimensional travel. In fact, we originally included a few temporal mechanics into the core gameplay loop, but they were based on our old, disproven theories of time travel. The ones that said branches in the timeline were impossible to create. Obviously, we couldn’t leave them in, so out they came!”

“But why not replace them with gameplay based on our newest theoretical models?” Susan asked. “Why abandon time travel as a game mechanic entirely? You’ve certainly taken some theoretical leaps with the inclusion of large-scale exotic matter megastructures in the game. Why not do the same for time and transdimensional travel?”

Isaac wasn’t sure where Susan was going with this, but she and Cephalie had maneuvered Ergon into a more talkative mood, so he sat back and allowed the interview to play out without interruption.

“A few reasons,” Ergon answered. “The first—and arguably most important—reason is we didn’t think it would be fun. At the end of the day, Weltall needs to be an enjoyable experience for our customers that keeps them coming back for more. And while some of them might enjoy the mind-bending aspects of fighting across multiple universes or triggering branching timelines, that was not the game we set out to create.

“We wanted to craft a play experience with a broad tapestry for player expression, true, but it also needed to have a certain amount of focus. That focus took the form of one universe and real-world physics. Within reason, of course. We’ve made adjustments here and there for balance purposes, but always in service of the core game. For example, our stellar engines are significantly more effective than the real thing would be.

“The second reason is time, strangely enough. We could have spent more time in development, certainly, but a unique opportunity had arrived, and we needed to go after it! Fundamentally redesigning the core gameplay experience at the same time would have been foolish, to say the least!”

“And this opportunity you speak of,” Susan said. “What was it?”

“Why, the interest in our product from the Admin, of course!” Ergon said. “ActionStream put us in contact with Director Jonas Shigeki, who had expressed interest in an early version of Weltall. He’d been looking for a product to bring over to the Admin, and he considered our game a prime contender! But he also wanted to release it within a few months, so we knew we had to make some hard choices, choose a final direction, and pull the product together. Though, in an odd way, we were still able to keep our physics true to the real world.”

“But how can that be without transdimensional combat in the game?” Susan asked.

“Yes, I know what you’re saying.” The swirl dimmed slightly. “We were originally going to make up a vague fictional excuse that involved a lot of hand-waving, but then we had the good fortune of discussing our problem with Doctor Andover-Chen of the Gordian Division. It turns out, he believes there are universes out there in the transverse that have vastly different properties than our own, perhaps even different speeds of light, stronger gravitational constants, or more intense chronoton barriers around the True Present. We simply hold that Weltall takes place in a universe with chronoton barriers so intense they instantly destroy anyone who tries to activate a time drive while inside!”

“That sounds like quite the elegant solution,” Susan remarked.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you!” Ergon replied. “We thought so, too. He also helped us settle on a title, strangely enough. We were calling it Universe all throughout its development, but then I hit on the idea of changing it to Weltall, as a small nod to the Gordian Division. In case you didn’t know, it’s an Old German word for ‘universe.’ The doctor said his boss would like that.”

“Was Director Shigeki pleased with how you held to his requested timeline?”

“I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. We didn’t deal with him much after the initial meetings. We worked through ActionStream mostly, but the feedback we received through them was overwhelmingly positive. We pour a lot of pride into our products, and I personally put in a ton of extra hours tuning game balance for the latest version.” The swirl pulsed proudly. “I think it’s some of my finest work.”

“That would be the version in use at the tournament?”

“Yes, correct.”

“Were you the last AC to work on it?”

“That’s right. I transmitted it to Sven yesterday.”

“It sounds like you’re quite excited to see if the game is well received in the Admin.”

“Oh, absolutely! I think we have the makings of a genuine hit here, but one can never be certain until the product is out in the public’s hands.”

“Then I take it you’d be upset if someone altered the game file to make it threaten Admin players.”

“Oh, good grief, yes!” Ergon declared. “Why, I’d be livid! Why would anyone…wait a second.” The swirling mass dimmed to a ruddy color. “Did someone do that?”

“Yes.” Susan nodded gravely. “I’m afraid so.”

“THEY DID WHAT?!”

The swirl exploded with flame and fury so strong it threatened to blow their virtual forms out of their seats. The table rattled against the floor, and Isaac grabbed hold of the table leg while Susan braced herself with a foot against the back wall. She waited for the eruption to die down, and even when it finally did, the swirl continued to undulate with the equivalent of heaving, angry breaths.

“So, to confirm,” she said at last, “you were the last AC at your company to handle the game file.”

“I was,” Ergon replied, his livid rage contained for the moment.

“And you sent it straight to Sven Kohlberg.”

“Yes,” he simmered.

“Do you have any idea who might have altered it?”

“I wish I did,” he seethed, “but no. I have no idea who fucked with my game.”

* * *

“He seemed quite passionate about his work,” Susan said as they headed down the corridor to the CFPD forensics labs.

“And unlikely to be involved,” Isaac said. “But appearances can be deceiving when it comes to the abstract. Many ACs lack the neural chemistry—simulated or otherwise—behind emotions, and that can make them difficult to read. No shifty eyes or shuffling feet to clue us in to what lies beneath the surface.”

“No eyes or feet at all, this time.”

“True enough.” Isaac gave her a thin smile. “Fortunately, we happen to know an expert on AC behavior.”

Cephalie’s avatar appeared atop the LENS. “You rang?”

“Any thoughts on Ergon?”

“Plenty. I’ve seen his type before. Some ACs become detached from reality, and he struck me as one of the types who live their lives almost exclusively within the abstractions they select. If that’s accurate—and I think it is—then he wouldn’t care enough about the politics at play here to threaten either Sako or Masuda.”

“Not to mention he’d be alienating potential customers,” Susan added.

“My thoughts as well,” Isaac said. “And we’re faced with the same gap when considering Kohlberg. Why harm your own company when you’re positioned to profit from its success?”

Isaac palmed the door to Forensics Lab Two. It split open, and he walked inside.

“Hey, everyone.” Nina nodded from her seat at a workbench, alone except for her drones. The disassembled components of Lacan’s wearable floated within a sterile glass-fronted chamber set in the wall, suspended in a thin and almost invisible prog-steel mesh so that the pieces appeared frozen in air, mid explosion.

“I come bearing gifts,” Cephalie declared from atop the LENS. A pseudopod morphed out of the side and presented Nina with Kohlberg’s pendant in an evidence capsule.

“Yay,” Nina moaned halfheartedly. “More work.” She waved absently to her drones. One of them took the capsule and fed it into the next workbench. “Anyway, what brings you down here?”

“We finished our interview with Ergon,” Isaac said. “It seemed like a good time to regroup.”

“Impressions?” Nina asked.

“He’s even less likely to be involved than Kohlberg. How about you? Got anything for us?”

“I do. Check this out.” Nina expanded part of her interface and sent them copies. “I think I found where I slipped up. Or rather, where I might have slipped up. I’m not certain either way yet.”

“That’s not an encouraging start.”

“I know, but bear with me.” She highlighted a nodule within the wearable’s schematics. “See this here? It’s on the underside of the wristband and is designed to connect with a person’s PIN, or Personal Implant Network. Basically, that’s the Admin equivalent of our wetware implants. Anyway, the component maintains its own activity log file independent of the wearable as a whole, and that log doesn’t match up with other logs.”

“Sounds suspicious,” Susan said.

“It is, but here’s where it gets interesting. If we assume this sub-log is unaltered, then the prankware was loaded into the wearable from Lacan’s PIN! Not an external device!”

She grinned and spread her arms grandly, but then frowned when both Isaac and Susan didn’t acknowledge the revelation.

“Do I need to spell it out for you?” she asked.

“That’d be best,” Isaac said.

“Okay.” She scooched forward in her seat. “Recall what the wearable does. It’s a translator for SysGov infostructure. But if I’m right, Lacan didn’t load the prankware onto it directly. He loaded it through his PIN. Which means the prankware was copied to his PIN without the wearable’s help. And that means the prankware came to him through an Admin interface! Not a SysGov one!”

“I see now.” Isaac nodded. “Given what you’ve discovered so far, do you think the prankware was planted on him?”

“It’s a distinct possibility.” She gestured to the disassembled device. “Unfortunately, that’s about all I can say. It’s a possibility.”

“Has anyone talked to Lacan about this?” Susan asked.

“LSP interrogated him again. He still maintains that he’s innocent. No new information, though.”

“Did the file come directly from Lacan’s PIN?” Susan asked. “Or was another device using his PIN to connect with the wearable?”

“Don’t know,” Nina admitted. “I could probably figure that out if I analyzed Lacan’s implants, but Susan, you know how those implants are secure little buggers. I’d have to cut him open and take them out to get a good look at them, and I don’t think we’re quite there yet. Not while you two have less squicky avenues to explore.”

“This is still a promising development,” Isaac said. “If I understand you correctly, this limits who could have planted the evidence to either another Admin player or part of the chronoport’s crew.”

“Not really,” Nina cautioned. “Remember, the SysGov finalists and ActionStream reps were all in the Admin recently, and all of them had wearables to translate Admin infostructure.”

“Hmm.” Isaac grimaced.

“Sorry.” Nina shrugged her arms. “But that’s what we’re dealing with.”

“What about Pérez?” Susan asked. “Did he or his team help you out with analyzing the wearable?”

“I asked him, but he apologized and said he didn’t have anyone. None of the people on his security team are infostructure specialists. They’re more the run-and-gun variety.”

“Makes sense,” Isaac said. “They’re here to guard the players, not conduct an investigation.”

“Well, sometimes we get lucky,” Nina said with indifference, “and sometimes we don’t. It was worth a shot.”

“What should we do with Lacan, then?” Susan asked.

“Nina?” Isaac asked. “Your recommendation?”

“I say we hold onto him for now. Even with what I found, it’s still possible he’s involved. There’s not enough evidence one way or the other to be sure. You want to risk releasing him and then have it blow up in your face later?”

“No.”

“Then have LSP hold onto him until we know for certain.”

“All right,” Isaac said. “We’ll go with that for now. Anything else?”

“Yep. Panoptes got back to me regarding your exaton of smut.”

“I think you mean exabyte,” Isaac corrected.

“I know what I said.” Nina leaned back. “Anyway, they didn’t find anything unusual on the image from Kohlberg’s desk. The only copy of the UAM they found matched the unaltered version ActionStream provided us earlier.”

“What about his apartment?”

“Preliminary report is the UAM never touched that system.”

“Preliminary?”

“I’ve been expediting every request, but it’s not like we’re the only case in the queue. This stuff takes time. They’re moving forward with a deeper analysis, but their rep told me—as one specialist to another—not to get my hopes up.”

“Then that leaves Kohlberg’s pendant,” Susan noted.

“Which I’ll start on as soon as we’re done here,” Nina said. “I don’t think Lacan’s wearable has anything else to tell us.”

“Where does this leave us?” Susan asked Isaac.

“Nowhere good. Cephalie? How about you?”

The small woman floated down from the LENS to Nina’s workbench.

“A few things to report,” she began, “I spoke with Claudia Siebert, Kohlberg’s old AC.”

“And?”

“She’s been on Earth this whole time, so she’s not involved. I also pumped her for potential dirt on Kohlberg. Gave her every window I could think of for her to drop a bombshell, but she wouldn’t. Her story matches Kohlberg’s; they went their separate ways amicably.”

“Did she have anything to say about his…umm”—Susan smiled bashfully—“colorful interests?”

“She knew about them. She didn’t spell it out for me, but I got the impression she joined in from time to time.”

“Ah.”

“Also”—Cephalie pointed her cane at the pendant—“I took a peek inside Kohlberg’s secure wearable. Nothing too invasive, but enough to scope out the contents.”

“Anything interesting?” Isaac asked.

“Only the unaltered version of the program. Nothing else.”

“Then that’s the entire transfer path.” Isaac put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “From Ergon to Kohlberg to the pod. We’ve seen the correct version all the way through.”

“Has Crimson Flower management gotten back to you with the surveillance video?” Susan asked.

“They did, and I’ve already looked through it and the logistics records. They sent me three close, unobstructed angles of the stage and two more for the understage. None of them saw anything out of the ordinary. Kohlberg showed up, loaded the program into each of the pods, then submerged the pods and left. After that, Flavor-Sparkle’s roadies began to set up. Understage cameras and the logistical record all confirm the pods remained in the stage the whole time, which means no one—roadies or otherwise—could have accessed them. First time the pods came back up was for the players.”

“Hmm,” Isaac grumbled.

“But there’s one other possibility you might want to look into,” Cephalie said.

“What’s that?” Isaac asked.

“The pods themselves. Or rather, the installer.

Isaac’s eyebrows raised at the possibility.

“You’re suggesting the program was loaded correctly but then altered by something malicious in the pod itself?”

“Just saying it’s a possibility. We’ve checked the software side of things. Maybe we need to dig into the hardware side. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Worth a look.” Isaac opened a comm window and waited for Kohlberg to answer.

“Yes, Detective?” Kohlberg said, sounding a touch annoyed.

“Mister Kohlberg, can you tell me who provided the isolation pods?”

“Easy. The company’s name is Avalanche. We contract all our infostructure install work to them. Their offices are in Petal Five.”

“Do you know who at Avalanche was in charge of the stage install?”

“That would be Ian Zou, one of their senior technicians. Why would you…oh.”

“Mister Kohlberg?”

“You know, don’t you?”

“Know what?”

“This is about his League membership, isn’t it?”

Ian Zou is a member of LAST? Isaac thought. Now that is interesting.

“It might be,” Isaac replied neutrally.

“Well, of course it is. I suppose it does look bad, and perhaps we should have chosen our contractors better for this project. I can send you his contact string if you like.”

“Please do.”

“Anything else, Detective?”

“Not at present. Thank you.” He closed the window.

“Someone from LAST worked on those pods,” Susan noted with a thin smile.

Definitely worth a check now.” He turned to Nina.

“You’re going to ask me to root around those pods, aren’t you?” she said.

“You know it.”

“Then pick.” She tapped the glass in front of Kohlberg’s floating pendant. “This or the pods first.”

“The pods,” Isaac said without hesitation. “It’s only a matter of time before ActionStream’s lawyers start pressuring us to release the crime scene. Let’s finish any open business there first.”

“All right, then.” Nina rose from her seat and motioned for her drones. “Come on, kids. Those pods won’t diagnose themselves.”

“What about us?” Susan asked.

“We’re going to pay Mister Zou a visit, and we may have a few pointed questions about his activities with LAST.”


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