Charles Stross - Halting State

“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?”

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 3000 and execute them on a Zone VM? She wants you to drop in on an office in Charlotte Square for an interview with the primary contractors, CapG Financial Services Consulting. If you get the job, AlfaGuru pockets 15 per cent from the customer for resourcing you. The more you think about it, the more likely it seems that Mandy has made a mistake. (“Games developer, accountant, what’s the difference?”) Unfortunately, she didn’t actually say who the ultimate client was, so you can’t Google them to be sure. Chalk it up to practice for the real job interviews you’ll be doing in a week or two. Why not play along? The worst they can do is tell you your suit sucks, and you knew that already.

Meanwhile, in other local footnote news (digested from the dailies by your agents, after they prioritize the important stuff about industry mergers, devkit point releases, and new game announcements): The ongoing squabble between Holyrood and Westminster over who pays for counter-terrorism operations is threatening to turn nasty (because nobody north of the border really believes that Scotland is some kind of terrorism magnet, whatever the bampots in London think). The first minister is making some kind of high-profile announcement about reintroducing free schooling to encourage the birth rate. And a Russian illegal immigrant has been necklaced down in Pilton, the victim of a suspected blacknet gangland slaying. It’s your usual Embra Monday morning rubbish, aside from the Brookmyre special.

The bus snakes up the road in due course, flanks rippling with Hollywood explosions advertising Vin Diesel’s latest attempt to revive his ancient and cobwebby career. You climb in and grab the overhead rail, another anonymous traveller among the late flexitime commuters, the young ned females with baby buggies and streaked ponytails, and the buttoned-up Romanian grannies with shapeless wheelie-bags. At least there’s nobody on the bus with an ASBO warning flag twirling above their head.

Charlotte Square marks the West End of the New Town (so-called because it was new when it was built in the 1760s: Edinburgh has history the way cats have bad breath). One side of it is linked to Princes Street and George Street by the short umbilical of South Charlotte Street. The central grassy square and man-on-a-pillar memorial is surrounded on all sides by looming grey town houses infused with the solidity of the Scottish Enlightenment and the gravitas of their seven-digit price-tags and Adam fireplaces. Nobody actually lives in these houses; they’ve long since been turned into very expensive offices, roosts for firms of solicitors and professional bodies and head-hunters: like CapG Consulting, to whose hallowed meeting facilitation centre you have been summoned.

“Good morning, Mr. Reed!” chirps Fiona-on-the-front-desk, discreetly arphing your details from your ID card. “Are we here for our interview?” She addresses you with the chirpy condescension of a dentist’s receptionist talking to a sullen three-year-old.

You briefly weigh the pleasure of making her cry against the potential damage to your credit rating and bite your tongue. “I guess I am.”

“Let me just see where you need to go…” She has a traditional terminal on her desk, and makes a big show of tippy-tapping the keys and clicking the mouse. “Ooh, that’s interesting. The client is Dietrich-Brunner Associates, and according to AlfaGuru you’re an exact match for the skill set they’re looking for! Isn’t that exciting?”