Charles Stross - Halting State

“We’re just taking you to the local A#amp#E,” SUSAN explains pleasantly, “just so they can look you over. Don’t worry about your friend, she’s sitting up front.”

There follows an uncomfortable interlude with wah-wah noises and many jaw-cracking jolts across homicidally inclined speed bumps: then a brisk insertion into a bay at the Accident and Emergency unit, where a nurse efficiently plugs you into a multifunction monitor and a couple of triage people conclude that you’re just suffering from mild shock rather than, say, a broken neck. Whereupon they leave you alone.

An indeterminate time later—just long enough for you to begin getting grumpy and thinking but what if I really was ill? —the curtain twitches. You try to sit up, just as Elaine sneaks inside. “How are you feeling?” she asks.

“Not wonderful, but better than I was. Bored.” You try to shrug, but it’s difficult when you’re lying down. You don’t want her to notice how happy you are to see her, so you try to keep her talking. “Did the police make any trouble?”

She pulls a face. “No. Turns out the taxi was breaking the speed limit: When I said we thought it was out of control, they were all tea and sympathy. Turns out it’s the third one this week.”

“The third—”

“Yeah.” She looks at you thoughtfully. “Stinks, doesn’t it? I think we ought to head back to Hayek, find Sergeant Smith, and sing like a Welsh mining choir.”

Stinks, doesn’t it? That’s one way of putting it: A thousand an hour is good money, but it’s not good enough to cover being stabbed, crushed, drowned, or otherwise bent, spindled, and mutilated in the line of duty. Especially not in a goddamn live-action role-playing game. You find yourself nodding. “Yeah. And the call from SPOOKS. In the taxi. I didn’t know you played SPOOKS.”

“Any particular reason?” She narrows her eyes, searching for contempt.

“I think it’s an interesting coincidence.” You pause. “I used to play SPOOKS quite a lot. But it never told me I was being kidnapped before.” There, it’s out in the open.

“Yes. By the Guoanbu.”

There it is again: You try to pull your scattered thoughts together. “When he tried to stab me. No, I mean before then. He wanted asylum, Elaine. What kind of game did he think we’re playing?”

“SPOOKS.” She’s watching you, as if she expects you to laugh at her. “Well, that figures.” A thought strikes you. “Maybe he was just nuts. You get that sometimes, a schizophrenic who mistakes their LARP controller for god or ‘M’ or something. One of the things we were working on for STEAMING was a sign-up wizard that does some personality profiling to weed them out.”

“But”—she bites her lip—“I don’t think you’re nuts. Do you think I’m nuts?” She asks.

No. “How long have you been playing it?” you ask.

“’Bout three years. Why?”

“Just thinking.” You’ve been into the game for even longer, LupuSoft expected you to play it back when they were in the conceptual development stage for STEAMING…“My account lapsed about a year ago, I was too busy working on a, a competitor. Only—hey, you’re not supposed to use your phone in here.”

“Bullshit, they just say that to force you to pay through the nose for the PatientLine services.” She dials a number. “Come on…hello? Yes?”

It’s really weird watching her face as she slips into the player’s headspace. The skin around her eyes goes slightly slack, her posture changes: Like a cat that’s spotted a bird, she’s all focus. It’s even weirder when you stop to think about it: because you know all the statistics, nearly 45 per cent of gamers are women, even though if you look at the biz from outside it seems to be focussed on an attention-deficient twelve-year-old male with a breast fixation and a sugar high. Something you read about SPOOKS comes back to you, that it was deliberately designed to punch female escapist buttons. Back in prehistory, when there were two Germanys, the East German spies used to recruit lonely female secretarial and administrative staff on the other side, using sex…but also sometimes just the promise of a life less ordinary. People will pay through the nose for excitement: Is it any surprise that they’ll take it if you’re giving it away for free?

“Yes, here he is.” She holds her phone out towards you. “It’s Spooks Control.”

“Yeah?” You take the phone. “Who is—”

“Hello, Jack. Your authenticator is Gold Koala Dictionary.” Which is flaky because even after a year you remember the three random words: They should have dumped you off their player database months ago. The voice is faintly familiar.

“I don’t play SPOOKS anymore,” you say automatically.

“SPOOKS hasn’t finished playing you , Agent Reed,” Control replies snippily. “Constable Patel will be along to see you in a minute or two. He’ll give you each a form to sign, then you’ll discharge yourself from hospital and he will give you both a ride back to Edinburgh. You have a meeting at four o’clock sharp.”

“What if I don’t want to go to any meeting?” You know it’s futile as the words leave your mouth, but that’s not the point. “I’m not in your bloody LARP anymore! I unsubscribed!”

“Agent Reed, this is no longer a game. If you don’t play along, we’ll have to have you taken into custody for your own protection. The recent attempt to abduct you was not an isolated incident: We’ve been informed that your niece Elsie went missing two hours ago. The local police assigned a Family Liaison Officer to the case after your reported threats and were preparing to move them to a safe house but—”

The voice continues to make buzzing noises, but you’re not paying attention: You’re staring at the back of your own head, wondering when you stepped through the looking-glass. Nothing makes sense, but looming at the edge of your universe is a thing of horror. The games have imploded into reality. You suppose you ought to be relieved that they told you about it, so that it’s not a figment of your imagination…but it feels like your world is ending. As indeed it should have, all those years ago.

“Jack?” It’s Elaine. She looks like she’s seen a ghost. “Jack? Talk to me!”

You hold the phone out. She takes it. “Yes?” she asks. Then she listens for a minute, nodding, occasionally saying “yes” quietly. “He looks shocked,” she says. “Put yourself in his shoes, for a—yes, I will. Yes.”

Eventually she hangs up. “Jack?”

“What?”

“Get up.” She looks like her dog’s just been put down. “We’ve got to go.”

You bundle up the thin hospital sheet and swing your legs over the side of the bed. “Why?”

“They told me about your niece. That’s awful…”

“Yes,” you say, unsure what else is expected of you. “But there’s nothing I can do about that right now.”

“They told me we’ve been drafted,” she adds, stiffly, looking at you with an air of uncertainty, as if she’s half-expecting your head to start spinning round, or something. Maybe you ought to be getting emotional, but it’s just one weird blow on top of another today. People are trying to kill you, repeatedly: All you really feel is a numb sense of dread.

“I figured that much. As well?”

“It’s in the end-user license agreement to SPOOKS. The usual, we let them do background checks to determine credit worthiness and ‘eligibility to participate,’ it says. The anti-nutcase clause. And we signed to let them vary the T’s and C’s.”

“So?”

“The anti-nutcase clause is effectively a privacy waiver for positive vetting. And the T’s and C’s—”