Walter Williams - This Is Not a Game

She’d received a message from Richard the Assassin that CRAPJOB’s online privileges had been canceled. So had BJ’s. So had Dagmar’s old account. All copies of Charlie’s patch had been reverted to the archived copy of Patch 2.0.

Dagmar supposed that BJ wouldn’t have discovered any of these changes as yet. Not if he was being feted by Aram.

CNN informed her that the attacks on the Chinese yuan had ceased. The bots had done as much damage as they could and left riots and anger behind.

Dagmar watched the monitor. More children, more tourists.

At last came a stout man staggering under a huge burden of flowers. Dagmar opened her door and met him on the doorstep of room 118. She put her key in the door.

“Maria?” he asked. “Maria Perry?”

She looked up. “Yes?”

He was a portly man around sixty, with white hair tied in a ponytail, gold-rimmed spectacles, and a cheerful red face. Dots of sweat marked his forehead.

“The management”-pant-“wanted me to give you this.” Panting. “It’s for being”-pant-“such a good customer.”

Dagmar tried to feign surprise. The vase was large and ugly, black ceramic, with reliefs of strange Polynesian tiki monsters. A huge spray of long-stemmed roses fanned from the opening at the top, the flowers white but rimmed delicately with pink. Below was a crazed mix of colorful blossoms: mums and carnations and black and yellow lilies, plus baby’s breath and other flowers that Dagmar couldn’t identify.

Dagmar opened the door of 118 and took the vase from GIAWOL, who immediately dissolved into a paroxysm of coughing. The vase was heavy with its presumed cargo of nails and gunpowder, and Dagmar wrestled it into the room and put it on the scarred old table. The scent of the roses mixed strangely with the Lysol smell of the room.

She turned back to GIAWOL, who had recovered from his coughing fit.

“Thank you,” she said, and raised a finger to her lips. “Remember not to send that text. And don’t tell anyone-they might be jealous.”

His grin was infectious. “Sure. Enjoy the flowers-Maria.”

Still grinning, he walked away. Dagmar watched him go, then closed the door and contemplated the enormous floral display.

Flowers, she thought, were really Siyed’s weapon, not BJ’s. BJ was running out of ideas.

She returned to 115, got her panama hat and a cardigan against the growing October chill. She went back to 118, collected the enormous vase with its extravagant spray of blossoms, and walked toward the street, flowers bobbing over her head like the feathers of a Lakota headdress.

Her rented car was a two-seater, so she secured the vase between the passenger seat and the shelf behind, then drove to Hollywood. Progress along the famous boulevard was slow, the pavement packed with traffic and mobs of tourists who looked even more bewildered than they did in daylight. Out-of-work actors walked up and down the sidewalks dressed as superheroes and offered to let visitors take their picture for a small fee.

Fly this bomb to where it belongs, Tony Stark, she thought. But Tony was busy posing with a couple of kids from the Midwest and failed to hear her mental command.

Eventually she got to the top of the street, where Hollywood became Sunset, and found a place to park. She took out the vase, hesitated, then opened the trunk and dumped all the flowers inside. With the vase itself swinging at the end of her arm, she located the two office buildings and walked down the dark, narrow old stair to Santa Monica Boulevard.

The blue-windowed office building stood across the street. There were lots of lights on the second floor, where Katanyan Associates was hosting a party for its new manager. Dagmar shifted the vase from the arm that was cramping to the arm that was not.

Its green color fluorescing in the light of a streetlamp, BJ’s Phalanx sat in the parking lot.

Dagmar took a breath, tilted her hat so that anyone on the second floor couldn’t see her face, and stepped into the night street.

This Is Not a Game

She felt the flush of danger on her skin. Her pulse was rapid but not frantic. She remembered being far more frightened in Jakarta.

She’d learned a few things since then. And besides, L.A. was her town.

Dagmar wanted the bomb inside BJ’s car because that would indicate that the bomb belonged to him. If she put the bomb underneath the Phalanx, he would be a victim.

She didn’t want him victimized. She wanted him indicted.

She would plant the bomb in his car and then send a text to the number that David had given to GIAWOL. BJ, assuming that Dagmar had been given the bomb, would use his burner to call the phone in the bomb and would then turn in surprise and shock as the Katanyan Associates windows reflected the orange flower of flame that burst from his own vehicle, and all his hopes and expectations were blown to smithereens.

Even Special Agent Landreth of the FBI would realize that there had to be a connection between this bomb and the identical weapon that had killed Charlie Ruff. The easiest explanation was that BJ had accidentally blown up his own vehicle with his own weapon.

There would be an investigation. In time, bomb materials would be found, as well as the place where BJ had assembled the bomb. And Dagmar would be questioned again.

BJ always had a grudge against Charlie, she would say. He thought Charlie had cheated him out of his company.

BJ would go to prison, possibly the gas chamber. He’d lose his job with Aram, and his attempt to subvert the gold-farming bots would fail.

He’d have nothing. He’d have less than he had when this whole adventure started.

Dagmar would tangle him in his own puppet strings and hang him out to twist slowly in the wind.

She glanced at the CCTV on the neighboring building and saw the cameras still dangling at a useless angle. Dagmar passed the empty guard box standing sentry in the parking lot and walked to BJ’s car. He had parked on the south side of the parking ramp, with a view of his new domain. L.A. shimmered below her, a skein of lights stretching all the way to the Pacific. Dagmar reached into her pocket and pulled out her cloned Phalanx remote, and she pressed the button.

Dagmar heard the solid chunk of a door lock opening. She pulled the sleeve of her cardigan over her fingers, crouched down by the low car, and opened the door without leaving fingerprints. She tilted the seat forward, scrubbed fingerprints off the vase with her cardigan, and tucked the vase behind the driver’s seat. She pushed the seat back into place.

She looked up at the building. Silhouettes wandered behind the lit windows. She didn’t recognize BJ or anyone else.

She rose, tilted her hat again to obscure her face from the new direction, and left the parking lot. Success tingled in her fingers and toes.

Her feet bounded up the old concrete stair. She neared the top, and breathing with exertion, she turned and gazed down over the parking lot.

The neon green Phalanx was visible, its color brilliant under the light. She reached into a pocket for the cell phone she’d bought just that afternoon, her very own burner.

“What are we going to do tonight, Brain?” she asked.

The answer seemed to hang pregnant in the air, so she spoke it aloud.

“What we do every night, Pinky,” she said. “Try to take over the world!”

Flowers delivered. Maria delighted.

She texted to the number GIAWOL had sent her, and pressed Send.

Cars hissed by on Sunset. Her heart beat double-time in her throat. Nothing happened.

Several minutes went by while Dagmar’s unease increased. She wondered frantically if she had miscalculated completely, if this was all some insane fantasy she’d cobbled together out of stray facts and paranoia.