Stuart MacBride - Halfhead

The mountain of muscle in the grey jumpsuit finished untying Emily and retreated to a safe distance, watching as she stretched out her hamstrings and flexed her fists. Now she was a ‘guest’ instead of a prisoner, she outranked him, but Will got the feeling the big man just didn’t want to end up being the fifth person she’d crippled that day.

Ken stood at the door to the mirrored room, holding it open. ‘You guys want a tour?’ He tipped a thumb at the corridor outside. ‘We don’t get a lot of visitors-you know, keeping the whole thing under wraps-but I’d love to show you round?’

Will nodded. Still feeling like an idiot. ‘Thanks.’

The place was a rabbit warren, the walls painted a cheery shade of yellow and decorated with abstract works of art. Various coloured lines ran along the floor beneath their feet, occasionally branching off as they came to a junction.

‘We reckon about half the guys living in Monstrosity Square got some degree of VR syndrome,’ said Ken as they stepped through a set of double doors into a control room. One wall was given over to a bank of monitors, stretching from floor to ceiling, each screen showing a tiny flat like the one Kevin McEwen had killed his family in.

‘Got monitors in about a third of the apartments. We’re getting the rest wired up, but it takes time, you know?’ He slid his hands over a control plinth, making the screens jump from flat to flat. Most of the residents were plugged into VR headsets, their gloved hands waving about in front of them, making things happen that only they could see. No one down here was rich enough for a cranial implant.

‘That’s about the only thing thirty percent of them ever do: all day, every day. We had to make Comlab insert food and toilet breaks into their programming, because the poor sods would end up with malnutrition and bladder infections. The remaining seventy percent spend anything between four and twelve hours plugged in. Why live in the real world when you can live in a full-immersion fantasy instead?’ Ken sighed. ‘It’s not the VR that’s addictive, it’s the escape it represents.’

Will watched the rooms and their inhabitants come and go on the screens. ‘What happened to the McEwens?’

Ken grimaced and traced a figure of eight in the air-every monitor changed to show the same thing: Apartment 47-122. He reeled it back and figures flickered in reverse through the place.

Will saw himself and Emily in their tatty rags…then the flat was empty…then there he was again, poking around just before Stein died…then empty again…and then it was the clean-up squad, stripping off the wallpaper, painting the walls with blood. Then Brian Alexander and his Network team dropped the chunks of dead body back where they’d found them. And finally the victims came back to life, made whole by the assault rifle in Kevin McEwen’s hands.

Ken twisted the control back to ‘PLAY’.

Kevin raised the gun and blew his wife and children apart.

Ken hit pause. ‘By the time the response team got up there it was too late. We’re still trying to find out how he got his hands on an MZ-90. I mean, Jesus: the damn thing’s an antique.’

He waved his hand over the plinth again and the screens flickered back to real time views of the different flats. Then Ken ushered Will and Emily back out into the corridor.

‘Primarily we’re trying to find out what really triggered the VRs,’ he said as they followed a green line in the floor. ‘Eleven years on and we still can’t pinpoint an exact cause. Compressed urban habitation is obviously a key factor, but if we can find out what’s actually causing their brain chemistry to change, making them go off the rails, do terrible things…Well, we could make a huge difference to these people’s lives.’

A pair of technicians came out of a door marked ‘AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!’, nodding a greeting at Ken as they wheeled a trolley away down the corridor.

Will watched them go. ‘Any success?’

Their guide gave Will a lopsided smile. ‘Not as much as I’d like. But we’ll get there.’ He pushed through the door the technicians had come from, leading Will and Emily into a medium-sized laboratory, lined with expensive-looking bits of equipment. The walls in here were the same happy yellow as the corridor, but the paintings had all been replaced by digiboards and cell diagrams.

A handful of serious-looking men and women were dressed in light-blue lab coats, bent over scopes, scanners, gene sequencers, and test tubes.

Ken pointed at a woman manipulating a big computer-generated holo of a human brain, the familiar red and yellow bands clearly visible in the frontal lobes. ‘We’re also working on methods to reverse the changes VR syndrome causes. I figure that if we can make a cure airborne and combine it with a heavy-duty sedative, we can just flood an infected building through the ventilation system. Knock ‘em out and fix ‘em up at the same time, before they can hurt themselves or anybody else.’

Ken clapped one of the scientists on the shoulder. ‘It’s a tough job, but if anyone can do it, it’s these guys.’

The man in the white lab coat grinned.

Will waited until they were back out in the corridor. ‘Why didn’t you inform us you were running trials down here?’

‘Ah.’ Ken shrugged. ‘You’d have to ask my boss that one. Me? I think the fewer people know half of Glasgow’s probably still got VR syndrome, the better. That gets out there’s going to be panic, hoarding, mass hysteria, civil unrest…’

Will had to admit he had a point.

They followed a blue line in the floor, Ken going on and on about psychological empowerment and how it was still possible for the people crammed into Glasgow’s connurb blocks to have a better quality of life.

But Will wasn’t really paying attention. He had his mind firmly fixed on a long shower, a carry-out, a bottle of wine, and a change of clothes. His gaily-coloured tatters were beginning to smell. He’d had enough of feeling, and looking, like an idiot for one day.

They’d reached a pair of frosted-glass doors marked, ‘SHUTTLE STATION’.

Ken ushered them through to an unassuming platform, the concrete tunnel stretching off into darkness on either side. ‘Well, this is where I have to leave you folks. I gotta re-home about three dozen families before the end of the day. Fight broke out in the lobby this morning. Starts out as a tiny scuffle-some kid gets his testicles mashed-and next thing youknow, boom: six dead, twenty seriously injured. If we hadn’t got a team in there pronto God knows how many more would’ve been hurt.’

He called for a private car, then offered Will his hand.

‘Nice to meet you Mr Hunter; sorry we had to zap you back there.’ They shook. ‘Give me a shout next time you’re coming down: we’ll have lunch and I’ll introduce you to some of the guys.’

‘I’d like that.’

Emily didn’t offer to shake Ken’s hand, but he didn’t seem too put out, just waved goodbye and left them alone on the deserted platform.

She scowled at the closed doors. ‘You buy all that horseshit?’

‘I’ve heard dafter things. And if they can come up with a cure for VR: can you imagine it?’

‘That wee shite is up to something.’

Will shrugged. ‘Everyone’s up to something.’

He could hear muffled voices in the corridor behind them: a man and a woman. Gossiping, discussing their caseloads, telling dirty jokes. He couldn’t really see them through the frosted glass, just two blobs of light and darkness going about their day.

Will turned his back on the doors. ‘Have I told you the one about the two nuns in a hydroponics garden-’ The growing roar and buffeting wind of an approaching shuttle drowned out the rest.