Charles Stross: Halting State

There’s a musical ding from over by the doorway, and a mail icon appears on your desktop.

ON DUTY, you send, giving the latte a final wistful look. “Bob? We’ve got a call.”

“Eh, boss…?” Bob lifts his cup and hides whatever he’s been working on—probably Solitaire.

“Bring it along, it’s nae the blues.”

You file the email as you leave the coffee shop. Bob trails after you. The destination shows up, as a twirling diamond just visible over the buildings on the far side of the road as you get in the car.

It’s a short drive from Corstorphine to the incident site, but it’s up the steep slope of Drum Brae, hemmed in by shoe-box houses at the bottom of the hill and the whirring prayer wheels of the wind farm at the top. By the time you’re heading downhill again, you’re worrying that the map is confused: “Turn right in one hundred metres” it tells you, but all you can see is an urban biodiversity coppice. “What’s the scene?” asks Bob.

“I dinna ken. The skipper says it’s a weird one.” You feel a flash of irritation—but your shift is a car short today, which makes it a stupid time for a prank—and right then you spot an open driveway leading into the trees, and your specs are flashing green. “Eh, look at that lot, will you?”

There are a bunch of cars parked at the end of the drive, and as the Forestry Commission doesn’t hand out Bentleys and Maseratis, it’s a fair bet that you’re in the right place. But the building they’re parked outside of is a raw contrast to the posh wheels: It’s more like a 1950s public toilet than a corporate office, just four concrete walls propping up a flat slab of characterless roof that seems to scream Asbestos! with all the force its wheezing, mesothelioma-ridden lungs can muster. Maybe it’s some kind of up-market cottaging club for the tech start-up crowd? You shake your head and climb out of the car, tapping your ear-piece to tell your phone to listen up: “Arriving on SOC, time-stamp now. Start evidence log.” It’s logging anyway—everything you see on duty goes into the black box—but the voice marker is searchable. It saves the event from getting lost in your lifelog. Bob trails along like an eager puppy. Eight weeks out of police college, so help you. At least he’s house-broken .

The door to the premises is a retrofitted slab of glossy green plastic that slides open automatically as you approach, revealing a reception room that’s very far from being a public toilet. So much for the cottage scene. The lighting is tasteful, the bleached pine impeccably renewable, and the vacant reception desk supports a screen the size of Texas that’s showing a dizzying motion-picture tour of an online game space, overlaid by the words HAYEK ASSOCIATES PLC. It stands sentry before a raw, steel-fronted lift door with a fingerprint reader. Naturally. But at least now you know this isnae going to turn into another bleeding community relations call. You’ve had more than a bellyful of them, what with being one of the few overtly heterosexually challenged sergeants in C Division.

“Anyone here?” you call, bouncing on your heels with impatience.

The lift door whispers open and a Member of Public rushes out, gushing at you and wringing his hands: “It’s terrible, officers! What took you so long? It’s all a terrible mess!”

“Slow down.” You point your specs at him in full-capture mode. Your specs log: one Member of Public, Male, Caucasian, 185 high, 80 heavy, short hair, expensive-looking suit and open-collared shirt, agitated but sober. He’s in that hard-to-guess age range between twenty-five and forty-five, used to being in control, but right now you’re the nearest authority figure and he’s reverting to the hapless dependency of a ten-year-old. (Either that, or he’s afraid you’re gonnae arrest him for emoting in public without a dramatic license.) He’s clearly not used to dealing with the police, which gives you something to play on. “May I see your ID card, sir?”

“My card? It’s, uh, downstairs in my office, uh, I guess I can show you…” His hands flutter aimlessly in search of a missing keyboard. “I’m Wayne, by the way, Wayne Richardson, Marketing Director.” Wayne Richardson, Marketing Director, is clearly unused to not being in control of situations. His expression’s priceless, like you’ve pointed out his fly’s undone and his cock ring is showing. “Ever-everybody’s in the boardroom; we’ve been waiting for you. I can, uh, take you there, Constable…?”

You give him a not terribly warm smile. “Sergeant Smith, Meadowplace Road Station. This is Constable Lockhart.” Richardson has the decency to look embarrassed. “Someone here reported a theft, but I’m a bit unclear as to what was stolen.” You blink up the trouble ticket again: Yes, this guy was one of the two names the dispatcher logged. Something about a safety deposit box. Boxes. “Who noticed the item was missing? Was it yourself?”

“Uh, no, it was the entire security trading team!” He looks at you with wide-open eyes, as if he thinks you’re about to call him a liar or something. “It was on all the screens, they couldn’t miss it—there must have been thousands of witnesses all over the shard!” He waves in the general direction of the lift. “There’s a crisis meeting in the boardroom right now. We captured the intrusion on-screen so you can see for yourself.”

They watched it happen on video instead of trying to intervene? You shake your head. Some people will do anything to avoid a liability lawsuit, as if the thief tripping on a rug and sticking their heid in the microwave is more of a problem than being burgled. Or maybe the dispatcher was right? Off their meds an’ off their heids. “Show me the boardroom.” You nod at Bob, who does a slow scan of the lobby before trailing after you.

Richardson walks over to the lift, and you note there’s a thumbprint scanner in the call button. Whoever stole the whatever, there’ll be a logfile somewhere with their thumbprints on file. (Which from your point of view is good because it makes detection and wrap-up a whole lot easier. The warm glow of a case clean-up beckons.) As the doors open, you ask, “What exactly happened? From the beginning, please. In your own time.”

“I’d just come out of the post-IPO debrief meeting with Marcus and Barry, they’re our CEO and CTO. We were in a three-way conference call with our VC’s investment liaison team and our counsel down south when Linda called me out—she’s in derivatives and border controls—because there was something flaky going down in one of the realms we manage for Kensu International. It’s in the prestige-level central bank for Avalon Four. There was a guild of Orcs—in a no-PvP area—and a goddamn dragon, and they cleaned out the bank. So we figured we’d call you.”

The lift stops, and you stare at Wayne Richardson, Marketing Director, in mild disbelief. The jargon can wait for later, that’s what your interview log is for: But one name in particular rings a bell because Mary says Davey’s been pestering her for an account. “Avalon Four? Isnae that a game ?”

He swallows and nods. “It’s our main cash cow.” The doors slide open on an underground corridor. The roof is ribbed with huge concrete beams painted in thick splashes of institutional cream, and it’s startlingly cold. There are bleached-pine doors on either side, a cable duct winding overhead, and posters on the walls that say LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS. For a moment you wonder if you’ve blundered into some kind of live-action role-playing thing, a cold-war re-enactment maybe: but just then your phone chimes at you that it’s gone off-line.

“Uh, Sarge?” asks Bob.