Reality Hack (22 page)

Nisa gave the man one last look before starting for the university buildings, and as she did, he turned away and began walking down the street. The rear board did not have words on it but three characters or glyphs. They were Hebrew, Nisa knew that from the game, but she had never learned to read them. Shaking her head, she went on her way.

~~~

‘I swear my character was up to no good,’ Maxim said. ‘I mean, look at that suit. That guy is
evil
. No one with that kind of power in a suit like that can be anything but evil.’

Nisa gave him a grin. ‘He seemed kind of nice to me,’ she said.

‘Evil,’ Maxim repeated. ‘Not that we’ll ever find out, of course. You got smacked in the face with enough magic to kill an elephant so that story ends there.’

‘And the whole thing comes out of my head?’

‘Yours and The System’s. Yeah, we never came up with a better name so it really is called “The System” until some marketing guy gets a hold of it anyway. It’s an AI, basically. We give it some parameters to work with. Like you wanted supernatural horror, suspense, and some romance. It feeds your mind images and sees what plays back, and then starts generating the story.’

‘That
is
pretty damn clever. And I built it?’

‘Yeah, and I hope your memory of that comes back soon, because you’re the only one who knows how it works.’ He pointed at the terminal behind her. ‘Maybe you should log in and see whether the interface throws up any memories.’

‘Yeah… I’ll give it a try.’

Maxim walked out, leaving Nisa alone in the dimly lit room behind the machine she had spent three days in. Here she was right in the core of the computer system, sitting in a semi-circular control suite surrounded by banks of electronics. She was fairly sure that she only dimly understood the equipment, even when her memory was operating perfectly. She programmed it, but Maxim was the one who constructed the machine. Swivelling her chair around, she tapped a key for attention and got a login prompt.

She remembered her password without thinking, which was a good start. Four screens flashed into life. There seemed to be a lot of icons scattered around them. There were two displays showing diagnostic windows and she could tell as soon as she saw them that The System was operating within expected parameters.

There was also another window with text in it.
Good Morning, Nisa. It is a pleasure to see you have recovered from your first trip into my mind.

Natural language communication. They had decided against voice mode communications, but the AI could understand English and several other languages.

Nisa put her fingers to the keyboard.
Not entirely. My memory is still a bit strange. I remember the game world better than this one. You did a really excellent job of immersing me in the story.

Thank you, but you programmed me, and I know you better than anyone else in the team.
Nisa grinned; the computer seemed to have a fairly good personality.
The disorientation effect will fade, but my estimation is that you will always have some disparate memories from the experience.

That could be a problem. If people went into the machine and came out a little disoriented for a few days, they could probably cope. It would be a holiday thing, four days in a fantasy world, three days to recover on a beach somewhere. If they were always going to be confused about which life they were living…

Of course,
The System continued,
it is always possible that you are lying in a hospital bed in Westminster, unconscious after a near-fatal magical accident, and this world is the dream.

Nisa stared at the monitor for several seconds before typing,
Don’t joke about that.

I am not joking. How do you know which is the real world, Nisa? The one you experience now or the one we made together? When you can answer that, you will be able to separate the memories. Psychology is part of my basic programming.

Damn! Either she was a
really
good programmer or The System had developed some emergent behaviours that were really exceptional.

Okay. I’ll work on that.

She heard someone move behind her and a quick tap of the keys blanked the current conversation. She was not exactly sure why she wanted to keep it private, but she did. She was about to turn when hands landed softly on her shoulders, squeezing gently and then sliding down toward her breasts.

And she knew who they belonged to, and why Alaina had thought the job had made her more distant. The memories washed in like a tidal wave leaving her shocked enough that the hands were cupping her breasts before she spoke.

‘No, Brandon.’

‘Nisa, I…’

‘No. It’s over. I told you no more and I meant it. We’re both married and I will
not
lose Alaina the way Frank lost Alison.’

It had been Norbery’s messy divorce over a brief affair, which had ended his marriage and wrecked him for several months, which had made Nisa realise that she was being incredibly stupid. Losing a woman like Alaina would take someone with an incredible degree of masochism which was just not her. In fact, Alaina was the one who liked a little spanking, and that memory was really not needed right now.

‘I thought…’ Kellog began.

Nisa tapped a few keys, locking the terminal, and got to her feet, pushing Kellog’s arms aside. ‘You thought my fucked-up memory might give you an in? Well, I didn’t remember the affair until you put your hands on me, but now I remember calling it off. Touch me like that again and I’ll break your arm.’ She stormed out, trying hard not to look like she was and thinking she probably failed.

That made sense of some other parts of the game world. She had turned Kellog into an automaton in there. No emotions she would need to deal with. But the underlying sexual tension had been there, trying to come out, and it almost had in Manchester. Except that it had been him who rejected her… Okay, so not all the facts fitted perfectly, but this was her subconscious mind. Rationality was not a requirement.

Well, now she was going to have to get through the rest of the day with her betrayal of Alaina fresh in her mind, and then go home to face her. Nisa frowned. Well… Fuck that! She had made the choice, hadn’t she? She had decided Alaina was worth more to her than some guy’s cock between her legs, and if the last couple of days had not proved that Alaina was something special then… Hell, yes! Game-Nisa would have put it behind her and got on with being the little hellion Alaina seemed to be enjoying.

‘Maybe I could learn a few things from my other persona,’ Nisa muttered. What was it she had remembered? Alaina liked being spanked… Now
that
was something to dwell on rather than Brandon fucking Kellog.

Isle of Dogs, November 19
^th
.

‘If you’ve got memories from two lives,’ Nisa said, ‘and one set is false, how do you know which is the real world?’

Alaina, lying in bed beside her, frowned. ‘I thought your memory was returning.’

‘It is. It has. It’s just that I still
remember
the other world. It still feels real to me, even if I wasn’t even
born
in twenty-fourteen. The System said I’d be over it properly when I knew how to tell real memories from false ones. It’s important. If people going in there end up with a second life that interferes with their real one, we can’t commercialise it.’

‘Oh. I’d have thought…’ Alaina trailed off. ‘Well, you could…’ Her frown deepened. ‘Shit, how
would
you know what was real?’

‘That’s my point. I need to know how to make it work, or we’re stuck. Don’t get me wrong, I
know
this is the real world. You’re here…’

‘That doesn’t mean anything. You told me you’d seen me in the game and there was this instant attraction.’

‘Uh-huh, you are an incredibly hot blonde, and I think part of my subconscious wanted you to be there so I could have you in that world too.’

‘Ah, but what if
this
is a hallucination, and your attraction to me there has become our marriage here?’

‘That’s kind of the problem, yeah.’

‘That’s… hard. Okay, want an even more fiendish conundrum?’

‘Not really,’ Nisa said warily.

‘What if you never left the game? What if you’re stuck in there and the thing that supposedly killed your character caused an
in-game
hallucination where you fantasised our marriage?’

Nisa groaned. ‘You expect me to sleep after that?’

‘Not really. I want to go again and I figured that’d keep you awake so we could fuck. I’m real, you’re real, my hand on your thigh is real, now make with the kissing.’

~~~

There were voices in the darkness. They were barely audible, indistinct mutterings, or someone talking far in the distance, but she could make out a few words.

‘…still fighting…’

‘…Probrum…’

‘…cat should…’

‘Nisa…’

~~~

‘Nisa!’

Nisa blinked, struggling out of sleep at the sound of Alaina’s voice. ‘Whu…? What? What’s wrong?’

‘You were dreaming or having a nightmare, or…’

Nisa shook her head and tried to focus. ‘I woke you?’

‘I, um, couldn’t sleep. I kept wondering if this was really my life or whether I was a figment of your imagination.’

‘Idiot.’ She pulled the blonde girl into her arms and spooned against her back. ‘Feel real enough?’

‘Yes. But just keep holding me to be sure.’

Bloomsbury, November 20
^th
.

Nisa took a pull on her coffee and peered at the screen in front of her intently. She was checking everything she could on The System’s performance while she was inside it to see whether
anything
could have increased the immersion she had experienced. Especially in a manner which could have left memories more permanently than expected.

She seemed to remember her life pretty well now, but she still remembered Game-Nisa’s just as clearly. They did not overlap at all so it was almost like remembering a past life or something. She winced. Past life memories. She would have to remember
not
to mention that to Alaina or there would be another sleepless night.

Her phone buzzed for attention and she pulled it from the pocket of her jeans and thumbed the screen to life. She had been expecting to see a message from Alaina, but the number was unknown. Marketing crap, most likely, but she opened it and saw: 05d305e205ea. That was it, just a string of digits and letters. The repeating ‘05’ parts reminded her of something though, and suggested a string of four-digit numbers. Nothing larger than an ‘e’ suggested hexadecimal notation… Unicode! Three Unicode characters, but she was not familiar with a set starting with 05.

Draining her coffee, she tossed the foam cup in the recycling and headed for The System room. There were plenty of online Unicode translators, but she needed to talk to the machine anyway and she was sure it would be able to translate the code or tell her she was totally wrong.

The air was a little chilly. They kept the room cool, of course, and she had forgotten to put on her jacket again. Goosebumps appeared on her arms as she sat down and logged in.

Good morning, Nisa. How is the analysis going?

Nothing so far to suggest a problem. It may be purely psychological.

That was my belief. How can I be of assistance?

Nisa gave the machine a grin, even if it could not see it.
First, please translate the following assuming three Unicode characters: 05d305e205ea.

Assuming Unicode, these are the numeric codes for the Hebrew characters Daleth, Ayin, and Tav:
דעת
.

‘Oh…’ Nisa said, staring at the screen. They were the same three characters that she had seen on the placard man’s sign.

My Hebrew database describes a word using these characters, Da’at or Daas, which means knowledge, or belief. There is no further description.

Nisa shook herself. Why would someone send her that?
Who
had sent her that?! Never mind, not now…

Thank you. I need another diagnostic run executing, core sectors 2943578 though…

Concentrate on her work. Forget the weird messages and the feeling of disconnection she had developed suddenly. Everything was fine. This was the real world.

Soho, November 22
^nd
.

It was not Black Light, but it was a nightclub. The music was loud, the beat throbbing in your chest, the temperature was just a little too warm, and the drinks were too expensive, but Nisa had suggested they go out and this was where they had ended up. Frankly, she couldn’t have cared less where they had gone: the point was to be out, enjoying herself, with her wife.

They danced. Alaina had smiled knowingly when Nisa had suggested a club and had decked herself out in a skintight teddy and a tiny skirt. Nisa had gone with a cropped T-shirt and spray-on jeans. When they danced, they danced close, and the feeling of their bodies moving together, the brushes of skin contact, the little glances, all of it was adding up to an obvious conclusion.

And then Nisa saw the man standing beside the bar. He was tall, pale, and very serious-looking, and dressed in a black suit and white shirt which did not entirely look out of place amid the range of attire in the room. But it was almost as if no one else could see him. Or they were aware of him, since no one collided with him, but they were just not really
seeing
him.

Nisa looped an arm around Alaina’s waist and twisted them deeper into the crowd of dancers. It also happened to be toward the rear of the room, where the toilets were located, and Alaina giggled, making assumptions. The blonde looped her arms around Nisa’s neck and pulled in close, grinding their bodies together and staring intently into Nisa’s eyes. Her intent was obvious; this time it was Alaina who could not wait until they were home. Nisa twisted them through the crowd toward the bathrooms, glancing back once as they went, but there was no sign of the man in the black suit.