Chapter Ten
After his typical gulp of Flying Fish, five minutes in the lav, dressed and out the door routine, Dex fired up his system on the train ride in to B&B and sent off a message to Alvaro Zuccarelli. No more Mr. Nice Guy, it was time to start getting answers. By the time he was getting his first mug of coffee flavoured sludge, he had a meeting set up in Marionette City with Zuccarelli. The banker held offices there and Dex had been forced to make an appointment. Fine, they could play it Zuccarelli’s way; Dex didn’t mind so long as he got what he wanted out of the man.
He was part way through the third call of the morning when his internal system interrupted with an emergency message. He put the B&B customer on hold and checked it out. Someone was calling him on the emergency channel, sending nothing but a link to Marionette City. The Cubicle Men’s emergency system had access to that channel, as well as the automated everywherenet channel for disaster warnings or public health scares, but that was it. He had never had this happen before, so he just went straight in to see what was going on. As the linked area was materializing around him, he could see a humanoid form already there, waiting.
It took a couple of seconds to fully log into Marionette City, which was good news for Dex. He was just beginning to make out the form in the blocky world forming in his vision, when he saw what appeared to be a small explosion emanating from the middle of the shape in front of him. His instincts from his years in the goon squad kicked in and he hard aborted the login. As he was killing the process, he sent an urgent message to Annabelle. She responded immediately by voice.
“What’s up Dex?” she said, a hint of surprise in her voice. “Is this business or pleasure?”
Dex couldn’t be bothered with the niceties. “I think someone is trying to kill me,” he said, “in Marionette City.”
“What?” she asked incredulously and Dex briefly explained what he’d seen in the second or so before he killed the login procedure.
“I’m going in,” Annabelle said, “send me a link.” Dex did as she asked, then asked her to send him real time visuals of what she saw. She agreed and linked in to his last position.
She logged in and Dex saw the same images he’d seen just seconds before, only without the other form nearby. Annabelle turned on her heads up display, looking for nearby activity — there were a few avatars hanging out in that location, but nothing stood out as strange. “Damn it!” Dex said, “he’s gone.”
“Not so fast, mister,” Annabelle said, bringing up an unfamiliar screen on her display. “I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve, you know.” She entered some commands and the world around her seemed to shimmer. “And they say time travel is impossible,” she said, as Dex saw the space around him change.
“What the hell?”
“I’ve got a backdoor patch into the master log,” Annabelle said. “We can’t change anything, but we can see what happened. So, let’s go back, say, two minutes?”
“Sounds about right,” Dex said, amazed. His viewer looked like it was showing a vid running in reverse, avatars coming and going and at one point he saw the flash. “There it is,” he said.
“Let’s go back a bit further and see what we get,” Annabelle said as the images continued to run back. The shape Dex saw when the explosion happened left the area and Annabelle stopped the rewind. Dex saw an avatar enter the area, dressed in the most basic outfit available, the default avatar when someone first activates an account in Marionette City. It was blank looking in every way, performing no gestures of any kind, the face and body entirely neutral. The only thing about it that differentiated it from a completely newborn avatar was that it was holding something. Something that looked like a handgun.
Dex saw himself beginning to materialize and the avatar lifted the weapon, aiming it at a badly pixellated version of Dex’s avatar. He saw the gun fire and saw his own avatar link out of Marionette City at the same time. The gunman stood still for a moment, continuing to aim the weapon, then disappeared.
“Any idea who that was?” Dex asked. “Or what he was trying to do?”
Annabelle was quiet for a while, as text and images scrolled over her display. “I think I’m getting something,” she said. “Hang on, I have to link out. I’ll call you back in a sec.”
The images in front of Dex’s vision disappeared and he noticed the blinking light in his peripheral vision, indicating that he had a B&B client still on hold. He quickly reviewed the recorded client call, refreshing his memory. The poor sap was trying to cancel his support account and Dex was following the company line of trying to keep the customer on the books as long as possible. Fuck it, he didn’t have time for this. Dex picked up the call and before the customer could start screaming at him, he nicely said, “There we go, your account is canceled and a refund for the last month is on its way. Thank you for choosing Barrett and Brar,” and he ended the call. A few finger waves and everything he had said became true. He’d catch hell for it at the monthly meeting, but he had bigger fish to fry.
Annabelle had been pinging him as he was finishing the B&B call and he answered her as soon as he could. “Bad news, Dex,” she said. “It was a bot.”
“A bot?”
“Yeah,” she sighed, “a script someone wrote up to create a throwaway avatar who was trying to infect your account with a virus.”
“What?” Dex asked, perplexed. “What the hell is that supposed to do? Everlock would just kill it before it even got in. Who cares?”
Everlock was the pervasive anti-malware program that filled everywherenet and made it safe to plug the implanted human/silicon hybrid computer system everyone used straight into the public ’nets. Annabelle explained. “Everlock will kill the virus, sure, and you’d be just fine. But as a consequence of it finding the virus, you’d be locked out of Marionette City for a while. Maybe even a day or more, while Everlock pulled out the destructive code.”
“So the bot wasn’t actually trying to kill me,” Dex said, “just slow me down.”
“Looks that way,” Annabelle said. “Though there’s a few interesting things in here. You didn’t actually get a full hit of the virus, so you’re good to go. I did manage to get it all copied to my own system and I’m reading the source now. It looks like your friendly neighborhood killbot is lazy.”
“What do you mean?”
“It looks like he just recycled the code he’d used before,” she said, “I’m pretty sure this is the code that did the number on your vic.”
“What the fuck?” Dex said, his jaw open.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about this one,” Annabelle said, “I, ah, took the liberty of downloading your case file and reading it over. Hope you don’t mind.”
“That’s fine,” Dex said, impatiently, “that’s what it’s for. What do you think?”
“Well, your vic was a lot like this bot — just a virtual construction within Marionette City, built to emulate an individual login, but separate. It’s complicated to do, certainly more complicated for your vic than the bot, but it’s just code in the end. What makes Everlock work is that we’re not just code. There are built in protections in the interface between the wetware and the silicon, hardware protections. You’d never notice it, but there’s a very slight lag between anything passing the barrier between the hardware and wetware and that’s where Everlock does its magic. But for a construct that’s pure code, that barrier doesn’t exist. They’re still vulnerable to malware and that’s what this is.”
“So you’re saying that Reuben was killed by a virus?”
“Well, technically, no,” Annabelle said. “There’s no indication here that the code is designed to self-replicate. But it was foreign malware introduced into the system.” She added, coldly, “And, of course, you can’t kill something that’s not real.”
Dex ignored her last comment. “And what would it have done to me if I had been infected?” Dex asked.
“Actually, this is the interesting thing,” Annab
elle said, warming up to the subject again, “it actually wouldn’t have done anything. It would have just failed to run. The bot really wasn’t intended to hurt you, assuming its writer knew anything about the code it was deploying. All it would do is trigger the Everlock login freeze.”
Dex leaned back in his chair and thought. “Can you trace the bot?” he asked. “See who wrote it, who’s controlling it?”
“Dunno,” Annabelle said, “I can try.” She paused. “But it’ll cost you.”
“What,” Dex said, annoyed, “what do you mean?”
“Dinner,” she said. “Take me out to dinner tonight and I’ll see what I can find for you.”
“I... but...” Dex sputtered.
“Good,” Annabelle said. “I’ll make a reservation and send you the link. Til tonight, then.” She ended the call and Dex sighed. People, he thought. Can’t live with ’em.
• • •
Dex had to scramble to keep his appointment with Zuccarelli. He linked in to Marionette City directly to the building where the banker kept his offices. Dex checked the directory and found the rooms where he was to meet Zuccarelli. He walked through the construct, wondering how much effort it had taken to reproduce a historical four storey brick walk up and why anyone would bother. He climbed the stairs for two floors and halfway down the hall came to a door with Zuccarelli’s name stenciled on the faux glass.
Dex knocked and the door opened. Alvaro Zuccarelli was seated behind an enormous slate desk with nothing on it, not moving, seeming to stare off into space. It was a disconcerting image, but Dex simply walked up to the desk, put his palms flat on its surface and leaned in toward the other man.
“Enough bullshit,” he said, looking Zuccarelli in the eyes. “I have had a very bad couple of hours and you do not want to make me an enemy today. Reuben Cobalt. Tell me everything you know.”
Zuccarelli smiled, as if he were accustomed to being threatened. “I’m sure a man in your position can appreciate the value of discretion, Mr. Dexter. My clients do expect certain... additional benefits with their accounts here.”
“Can it with the sales pitch,” Dex said, sitting in the chair opposite the desk. “I’m not in the market. Reuben Cobalt is dead.”
“What?” Zuccarelli’s smile disappeared. “How is that possible?”
“It appears that he was murdered,” Dex answered, coldly.
“Murdered?” Zuccarelli looked genuinely shocked, but a man of his means would have an avatar that could fake anything. “Poor Ivy,” he said, softly.
“Do you know what her connection to Reuben Cobalt was?” Dex asked.
Zuccarelli looked at Dex in the eye. “She never made that clear to me and it was not my place to ask. One needs to be open minded in my business, Mr. Dexter.”
“Fine,” Dex said. “Then open your mind about Reuben Cobalt and tell me everything you know.”
“Very well,” Zuccarelli said. “I was Reuben Cobalt’s banker. That’s all. It wasn’t even a terribly interesting account. At first it was just small transfers in from Ivy’s account, but then Reuben started to get work of his own and I was more involved. What do you want — copies of his records?”
“Yes,” Dex said, “that would be a good start.”
“Fine,” Zuccarelli sighed and pinged Dex’s system. He accepted the download and a small spreadsheet appeared in his inbox. “What else?”
“What else have you got?” Dex asked, reminded of his old goon squad days. Sometimes it was fun to intimidate the witnesses.
“Nothing, really,” Zuccarelli said. “I didn’t know him well and honestly I have a program that handles most of the day to day affairs.”
Dex was scanning through Reuben’s records and whistled under his voice when he saw the final account balance. “He had a tidy bundle in here,” Dex said, “even after your usurious take.” Zuccarelli sniffed. “So, what’s going to happen to it?”
“Given the situation,” Zuccarelli said, “I’ll be transferring it to Ivy’s account. Seems appropriate.”
“Indeed,” Dex agreed. “So,” he said, switching tacks, “how do you know Ivy?”
Zuccarelli hesitated, as if deciding whether a lie would be preferable to the truth. He seemed to get a resigned look on his face and Dex figured that he’d be getting at least some version of the truth. “She built this place for me,” he gestured at the space around him.
“The room, or...”
“No, the building,” Zuccarelli said. “I own the whole thing.”
“I see,” Dex said, “you hired her firm?”
“No,” Zuccarelli said, “she was moonlighting for me. Through... my other life I became aware of her work at her firm. I think it was her first time as an independent — I paid her with cash and my services. She still has a small account with me. Now that Reuben is gone... well, I suppose I’ll see more of her now.”
“Guess so,” Dex said. He stood and thanked Zuccarelli for his time. “I might very well be back,” he said, before leaving. “And if you think of anything that might be useful...”
“I’ll be in touch, of course,” Zuccarelli said and Dex linked out of the man’s office. He had to go put on his date tie.