This Is Not a Game (17 page)

“This,” Andy said out loud, “is the
coolest thing I’ve ever seen!
”

He got busy. He powered up the satellite uplink and uploaded the video onto Video Us. He then logged on to Our Reality Network and posted a link to the video, and then uploaded the still pictures of the assassin to a new topic called “Who Is This Man? ”

It was only when the ambulance arrived and the police began to swarm the area that Andy began to wonder if perhaps he’d made a mistake.

“I talked to Austin’s mother this morning,” Charlie said. “The Red Cross came up with their phone number.”

His voice was raw with lack of sleep and hours of talking to the police.

“I’d never spoken to her in my life,” he said, “and I don’t think she has the slightest idea who I was, but I had to tell her that her son had been killed. And then as soon as I’d gotten through
that
conversation, the
father
called. Because the mother told him and he didn’t believe her. Or me. I only know that he was really pissed off and kept yelling. He didn’t believe me until I gave him Detective Murdoch’s phone number, and maybe not even then.”

Charlie lay back in his office chair, drawn eyes gazing sightlessly at the plush Pinky and the Brain dolls sitting atop his monitor. The tasteful functionality of his spacious office—huge desk, computer, monitor, and huge video displays—provided a contrast with their owner. Dense stubble coated Charlie’s cheeks and chin, and great sweat patches bloomed beneath the arms of his pastel shirt. The police had been present till after eleven at night, and after that, Charlie had been too busy to leave.

He both looked and smelled as if he’d slept on his office couch, which he had. At midmorning he’d sent his secretary out to buy some new clothes, and there were showers in the exercise room, which he’d use as soon as he had something to change into.

Dagmar did not possess an assistant who would buy clothes for her. She needed to do a laundry and was wearing yesterday’s clothes. She’d thought she’d at least had clean underwear, but apparently she’d miscounted.

“Have you heard anything from the police,” Dagmar asked, “about who did it and why? ”

“The police,” said Charlie, “do not confide in me. But I overheard some of them talking to Murdoch—they said they didn’t get the call early enough to track the killer with their camera drones, so nobody knows who he is or where the hell he went. We looked at the security cams and found out that the one on the door didn’t see anything, and the one at the parking lot entrance saw only the top of the guy’s helmet—so the police are fucking out of luck.”

Charlie waved a listless arm as he spoke, and then let it fall. Dagmar looked at his supine figure.

“Do you need coffee or something? ” she asked.

“Coffee’s all I’ve had for the last dozen hours,” Charlie said. “I can’t look at food right now. The sight of it makes me—well, it doesn’t make me sick, it just makes me not want food.”

“Yeah,” Dagmar said. “I know what you mean.”

She was floating on coffee as well, quarts and quarts of the stuff, and the only food she’d eaten was a piece of dry toast she’d choked down with a handful of vitamins. Unlike Charlie, she’d gotten home the previous night, but she’d barely slept. Every time she closed her eyes she saw a blood-spattered Austin lying on the blacktop, mouth slack and open, the Yankees cap rolled off his head and lying by his hand.

Do you think you might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder?
he’d asked.

Her answer had been less than serious, but she’d give a different one now. She’d seen dreadful things in Indonesia, but she’d had the consolation of going home afterward and looking at them from a safe distance.

The atrocities were no longer at arm’s length. They were right in her lap.

“Murdoch asked me,” Dagmar said, “if Austin had any enemies. And when I said he didn’t, they didn’t believe me.”

“Would you? ” Charlie’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “They asked me if he had any connection to organized crime.”

Dagmar was overwhelmed by a feeling of disgust at the question.

“Christ,” she said, “that’s stupid.”

Charlie gave her an irritated look.

“It was a drive-by shooting,” he said. “A contract killing, most likely. Murdoch was only asking the obvious questions.”

Dagmar felt herself dig in her heels. Austin was not some kind of mafioso or drug dealer, and he didn’t deal with them, and any investigation aimed in that direction was not only
wrong,
it was a waste of the time that could be spent finding the killer.

“If it was a contract killing,” she said, “they hit the wrong man.”

An idea brushed against her mind, but she was too weary to catch at it, and it faded.

“Listen,” she said. “We’ve got a problem.”

Charlie turned again to Pinky and the Brain, gazed at them bleakly, then closed his eyes.

“Oh yeah? ” he said. “Is it important? ”

“I’m afraid so.” She gathered her strength, then spoke. “A video of the killing turned up on Video Us, along with pictures of the shooter. They were taken with a zoom lens from—I don’t know—across the highway, maybe.”

Charlie’s eyes were wide open and staring at her. “Do the police know? ”

“I called Murdoch and gave him the URL. I had to explain about the game—I don’t think he quite understood it.”

“If they catch the guy,” Charlie judged, “what Murdoch understands doesn’t matter. Who took the pictures? ”

“A new gamer who uses the handle Consuelo. But I think she’s a sock puppet for someone like Hermes or Joe Clever—one of our Dumpster divers.”

“Jesus.” Charlie sagged in his chair again. “At least one of those bastards finally did something useful.”

“It means we’re being stalked by someone pretty serious,” Dagmar said.

Charlie flapped a hand. “Who cares? We’ve been stalked before.”

“But not by a contract killer,” Dagmar said. “If we look in the rearview mirror and see someone following us, is it Joe Clever or is it somebody with a gun? ”

Charlie gave her an unreadable look. “We are
not
the targets here,” he said.

“Crazy people exist,” Dagmar said. “None of the people we work or play with are exactly models of middle-American thought and behavior.” She banged a hand on the arm of her chair. “Someone killed
Austin,
for Christ’s sake!”

“Right. Shit. Damn.” Charlie hesitated. “Do you think I should put out a warning to our employees? ”

“They might overreact.” Dagmar thought for a long moment. “But if you
failed
to put out a warning and someone got hurt, then you might be liable.”

That decided it.

“Right. I’ll have Karin send out an email when she gets back.”

Dagmar hesitated. “There’s another problem,” she said.

“Can it wait? ”

“No.” Again she hesitated. She didn’t want to acknowledge this.

“The Video Us site,” she said, “has had nearly half a million hits since the video was posted.”

Charlie’s lip twisted. “Sick fucks,” he said.

“No,” Dagmar said. “
Confused
fucks. Consuelo’s a
gamer
—she posted the link on Our Reality Network and nowhere else. Nobody knows whether the video is real or a part of the game. The Our Reality people have been speculating on their live feed continually since eight o’clock last night, and they’re not slowing down.”

“Jesus.” Charlie rubbed his eyes.

“The buzz is
huge,
” she said. “It’s spreading outside the usual channels. And normally we
want
buzz, just not the kind we’re getting.”

“Screw the buzz,” Charlie said. “You’ve got a subscription to their live feed, right? ”

“Yeah. Under one of my handles.”

Anger edged Charlie’s tones, burned in his eyes. He jabbed a finger into the laminate surface of his desk.

“So go online,” he said, “blow your cover as Dagmar, and tell them that Austin’s death was not a part of the game but a real-life tragedy. And they should
shut the fuck up already.
Got that? ”

“Right.” Again she hesitated. “But it might be too late.”

“Too late for
what?
”

Dagmar looked at the savagery crackling behind Charlie’s eyes and decided not to answer.

“Never mind.” She rose. “I’ll go post the announcement.”

Unspoken objections still clattered in her mind, objections that had nothing to do with Austin’s death or the investigation.

They had to do with the shape of the game.

When Consuelo had posted the video and linked to it from Our Reality Network, the shape of the game had changed. The players had shifted their energies in an unanticipated direction.

Alternate reality games worked in a complex synergy with the player community. During the course of previous games, Dagmar had been forced to change the game when players moved in an unexpected way.

TINAG—this is not a game. The game only worked when both players and puppetmasters
acted as if everything was real.
When Dagmar, as puppetmaster, addressed the players directly, it shattered the illusion—it broke the fourth wall, as in theater when an actor turns to the audience and speaks to them directly.

If Dagmar posted a notice telling players that Austin’s death was real, all the player momentum that had been generated by the release of Consuelo’s video would come to a screeching halt.

Dagmar was loyal to her creations—to their integrity, their own internal sense. She wanted their shape to be logical, their interior purposes fulfilled. She didn’t mind changing her work if the change was for the better, but arbitrary changes made her crazy, and she completely hated changes that destroyed the illusion she had worked so hard to create.

But, she then realized, in this case her loyalty was ridiculous. What was the game—what was a mere story—against Austin’s tragedy?

Charlie was right. Dagmar had to make the announcement. Austin’s real death could not become a part of Dagmar’s alternate reality amusement.

She mentally composed the message as she walked to her office. As the executive producer for Great Big Idea she had a spacious corner billet and a desk filled with high-powered hardware. The rest of the office featured desks and shelves filled with souvenirs of Dagmar’s frenetic, complicated life. There were books, disks, manuals, file folders, and toys. There were posters from gaming conventions, graphic designs from the past four years of Dagmar’s games, portfolios of actors, technicians, and software designers, maps of areas where live events had taken place, books about the history of Los Angeles and other cities, and lists of the go-to people in half the cities of the world.

On a coat stand near the door hung her panama hat, the one she had worn in Jakarta.

She had always assumed that when she had some free time, she’d systematize her room into a streamlined, efficient, highly organized office that reflected her personality. But then, as the years passed and the clutter only grew, she’d finally conceded that the room
already
reflected her personality, and then stopped thinking about it.

She sat at her desk. Her computer was already logged on to Our Reality Network under one of her aliases, and she checked the message boards to see if there had been any developments in the last half hour.

And there it was.

Oh Christ.

For once I am not going to demonstrate how I learned this, as I very much like my day job and want to keep it. But thanks to Consuelo’s excellent snaps, we’ve got a ton of biometric data, and it gives us the identity of the shooter.

Our man is one Arkady Petrovich Litvinov, age 28, a Russian national born in Latvia. He is a member of Russian organized crime and is suspected of a string of murders in Russia and Western Europe.

This is his first appearance in North America. I doubt he arrived in the U.S. under his own name.

I’ve posted his rap sheet
here
—sorry, but it’s in Russian. You might have better luck with his
sheet from Interpol
.

I’m afraid this will end our long and ultimately fruitless discussion of whether the killing Consuelo caught on camera is part of
Motel Room Blues.
Great Big Idea is known for its innovative approaches to gaming, but I very much doubt they would hire a genuine Russian killer to play an assassin.

Maybe it’s time to leave this issue behind and return to the actual game that GBI is giving us.

 

Damn, Chatty! What are you in your other life? Some kind of spook?

 

I’m afraid I can neither confirm nor deny.

 

Are you a cop?

Let’s just say I have access to biometric data, and leave it at that.

 

I think we should stop harassing Chatsworth and thank him for his first-rate work.

 

Amen! Most excellent detection, dawg!

 

Customs should be able to ID him from biometric data and find out the passport he’s used to come into the country.

 

It’s not our problem any longer.

 

I’m just sayin’.

 

I’m not in a position to alert Customs myself. But perhaps someone reading this is better situated.