Kevin Guilfoile - Cast Of Shadows

Justin leaned across the armrest that separated them. “When the right idea is suggested, by you or by me, it will already be inevitable.”

Another night at home and another night Davis was spending downstairs in the blue room. Alone. Joan noticed he’d started messing around down there right after she suggested they clean it out. It was predictable behavior in some ways. Getting older and averse to change, Davis felt the room was threatened and reasserted control over it. She’d had enough psych classes preparing for pediatrics to recognize that. Still, it was frustrating. He was frustrating.

Joan tried not to give much credence to the horrible thoughts that sometimes crept into her head. She doubted he was having an affair. He seemed distracted, though. Inattentive. They had once spent all the time together they could, but tonight she sat in the living room with a book that held only half her interest while he sat a floor away doing what? Working on his family tree? Playing solitaire? Playing Shadow World? She laughed at the thought of Davis Moore, computer gamer. Nevertheless, one of the women’s magazines that came to her office rated Shadow World as the third-biggest threat to marriage, behind money problems and poor sex. Money wasn’t an issue with them – her practice was thriving and Davis had been well off even before his public speaking fees started rolling in. As far as sex was concerned, Davis’s drive was healthy for his age and Joan was fulfilled. It certainly wasn’t anything they argued about.

Up from her chair and into the kitchen, Joan made herself a decaffeinated tea and pushed the house intercom to see if Davis was interested in a cup. He said no, pleasantly, with a thank you, but he didn’t say when he was coming up, either.

“Whatcha doin’ down there?” she asked.

“Fooling around,” he replied. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

Fooling around. She knew it was silly, but those words weren’t the ones Joan wanted to hear.

Another animated alley on Shadow World Chicago’s North Side. This one was especially detailed, Barwick thought. She walked her avatar up to one of the walls until her nose was right against it. Every brick was different, flawed in its own way. She could see mortar breaking apart, and the faded color of old graffiti tags. Above her, the fire escape creaked from old age and dropped water on her shoulder. She wondered if programmers had done this in every alley, on every street, in every Shadow World town in the world. Or was it just this one? Was this alley special? Some sort of software beta test?

The dead avatar on the pavement belonged to Victoria Persino, stabbed and dumped. She had $300 in cash and a diamond engagement ring in her inventory. Another gamer thrill kill. Or, if you believed Justin – Sally looked up. Speak of the devil.

“So whaddya say, Jimmy Olson?” Sally said into her headset. “Is the Wicker Man online tonight?”

Shadow Justin looked down at the body but didn’t study it the way he usually did. He didn’t even photograph it. “Sally, yeah. Looks that way.” He walked the perimeter of the crime scene, but she could tell from his silence he had something on his mind, and she waited patiently for him to come out with it. “I have something I want to talk with you about.” He looked behind him and then got closer, as if he didn’t want the cops to hear him.

“What is it?”

“Sally, I was hoping you could do me a favor,” he said. “I want you to look into somebody for me.”

“What do you mean, look into?”

“I mean look into. Check him out. See what you can find.”

“Who is he?”

“His name’s Sam Coyne. Rich guy. Lives downtown. He’s a lawyer for a firm called Ginsburg and Addams.”

“What’s this about?”

“I just need to know as much about him as I can.”

Justin must be tired of getting shit from me for his crazy Wicker Man conspiracies, Sally thought. He’s trying to pretend this is about something else. “What happened? Did you find out you were adopted and this guy’s your real dad or something?”

“Something like that. Yeah,” Justin said.

Liar, she thought.

“Can you do it?”

“You’re my buddy. My protege. I am sworn to look out for you, so I’ll see what there is to see.”

“Thanks,” Justin said.

Barwick’s avatar pointed to the body on the ground. The detail on this girl was much more sophisticated than the detail on Sally or Justin or anyone else Sally had ever met inside the game. Her skin looked organic. Sally could practically count her pores. “I bet Victoria here just signed up. Got the latest version of the avatar creator,” Barwick said. She had read in a gamer magazine they needed to upgrade the animation in order to keep the sex freaks happy. “What’s your best guess about what happened to her?”

Shadow Justin looked at the body and head-checked the length of the alley. “Maybe a thrill kill. Maybe not.”

“Come on, Justin,” Sally said. “What do you know?”

Justin wouldn’t let her in on it. “Sam Coyne, Sally,” he said. “Just please check him out.”

Mickey the Gerund pulled the last job of his career in Seattle, blowing up a doctor, her husband, and their two college-age sons as they drove to dinner. Although he used them sparingly early in his missionary career, there was something about bomb-making he’d grown to love. He taught himself about explosives and timers and triggers, and so there was some DIY satisfaction in that. There was also the permanence of a bomb. A bomb is instantaneous and forever. Guns and knives create wounds that can be undone. A doctor can look at the knife and see where it entered the flesh, and he can sew it together again. But a bomb takes things apart – both lives and property – in a magical, secret way, and every char and shrapnel it creates is unique. If you knew how to ask it, the bomb might be able to tell you how to put it all back together, but – and here’s the elegance of it – the bomb destroys itself first.

Mickey knew the Seattle job might kill a few innocents, if you could call people who ate expensive meals and enjoyed Ivy League educations paid for by the business of cloning “innocent.” That had stopped being a dilemma for him long ago. This was a righteous cause, and for the cause they were fighting and winning, in no small part due to his willingness to kill “non-combatants.”

Some polls showed more than fifty-five percent of Americans considered themselves “anti-cloning.” There was more ambivalence over the use of cloning techniques for medical research and so forth, but on the subject of human reproductive cloning, the public was sending Congress a clear message, and although the wheels turned slowly in Washington, there was a fair chance they would pass the Buckley-Rice Anti-Cloning Act in the next few years.

Mickey sat on the end of a queen bed in an Idaho motel room and cleaned his gun. There was plenty more he could accomplish with this rifle and this box of wires and the leftover C-2 explosive, but it was time for him to retire. His back hurt from all the miles upright on the road. His head hurt from the meticulous planning. All his life he’d remained three steps ahead of everyone, but he didn’t want to think ahead anymore. He wanted to meditate on the present for a change. To enjoy a sunny day without having to worry about the consequences of nightfall. To drive his car without running away. To plant and care for a real garden, with lilies and tulips and vegetables. To give birth to a yard of grasses and flowers and fruits, and let it feed on the sun. Watch it mature. That would be a fitting retirement for him. A celebration of God-granted creation.