Chapter Four

Manchester, 25 September 3124

Tom Carter sat across the table from the woman from Dudley Street. He was leaning back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest, staring at her, willing her to break her apparent vow of silence. She had refused a lawyer before the interview, refused to answer any questions put to her, and seemed intent on playing a staring contest with Tom until he gave in. She would not win. Tom was used to this type of suspect. While she stared at him and he stared back, he put his body into autopilot, fixed in his current pose while his mind browsed the mental snapshots he had taken of the suspect’s flat.

One of everything, except mugs and plates. Either Carlos was very good at covering his tracks, or he did not live with the woman. The fact that he was registered to that address and the fact that the woman had a restricted occult book in her possession suggested he was there, however. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise.

The interview room door opening brought Tom back to the real world. He glanced around and saw Eric motion him outside.

‘Interview suspended at 02:14,’ he said as he rose from his chair.

Outside the interview room, Eric stood with a man Tom did not recognise. He was short, thin, and bore a long, drooping moustache like so many young men seemed to these days. Apparently the old soup strainer was back in fashion, although Tom could not for the life of him understand why.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Tom.

‘Forensics went over the flat,’ said Eric. ‘We found more books and some statues of some kind hidden in a secret compartment in the suspect’s bed.’

‘So we’ve caught ourselves a cultist. Is that all?’

‘Not quite,’ said the moustachioed man. ‘We also found a key to the downstairs apartment in the secret compartment. We let ourselves in. You might be interested in what we found.’

The man handed Tom a large folder full of photographs. Tom flicked through them, examining each one quickly, not needing to look at them for long to realise the significance of what he was seeing. Walls covered in occult markings, diagrams like those at the flat of John Edward Collins. A room with two bunk beds in it, and only one bunk showing signs of use.

‘So this is where he was staying,’ said Tom.

‘From the look of things,’ said the moustache man. ‘Apparently he was eating at your suspect’s flat but sleeping in this cult place. We found a carryall with men’s clothes in it and documentation in the name of Carlos García Arroyo.’

Tom closed the folder and turned around to head back into the interview room. ‘Give me five minutes.’

‘We haven’t got to the worst part yet,’ said Eric. ‘Take a look at the last photo.’

Tom turned back to the two men, giving them a quizzical look as he opened the folder once more. The final picture was of a dark room made of thick stone, with broken wooden boards on the floor. In the centre of the room, a set of manacles hung limp from the ceiling; a dark stain coated the floor below.

‘What’s this? Some sort of dungeon?’ asked Tom.

‘It looks that way. We found the trapdoor into it hidden under one of the bunk beds.’

‘Any evidence it has been used?’

‘The samples we took haven’t come back yet but we should know in an hour or two.’

Tom closed the folder again with some force and headed back into the interview room.

‘Interview recommencing at 02:31,’ Tom barked. ‘You have some explaining to do, Missy.’

He threw the folder across the dull grey table. The photographs spilled out over the woman’s lap. ‘Get talking. I want to know about your fucked up dungeon, and I want to know now.’

The woman looked at him with blank eyes and said nothing.

Tom spread his arms wide on the table and leaned in close to the woman. He was so close to her he could smell the sweat and grease in her matted hair. She was hideous, totally repulsive and her stench was enough to make his stomach churn but he held his place nevertheless.

‘If you don’t talk,’ he growled. ‘I’m sending you down right now. We’ve got enough from the blood samples to put you away for life, and your fucked up spellbooks will mean you’ll never get parole.’

The woman snickered. It was the first sound she had made since the interview began.

Tom held his stance for a minute more, then pulled back and stood up straight. It was obvious she was not going to talk. Fine, he thought.  Let’s play it that way.

‘Interview concluded at 02:40. Amelia Morrison, I hereby charge you with murder, conspiracy to commit murder and possession of illegal texts. You will be taken from this place to a secure facility where you will await trial.’

He turned and made his way out of the room as calmly as he could manage.

Emily Ward, Secretary of State for Immigration for the last eighteen years, was waiting outside the office doors. Seren tapped a button on her desk terminal to signal for Ward to enter.

‘You asked to see me, Madam President?’ said Ward.

Like many of the New Buzz movement, Ward had given up using her given name in place of her family name. According to the philosophy of the movement, this represented a “higher embrace of family over personalty”. To Seren it just made her wonder how they differentiated between people when the movement brought in entire families. Ward had explained that not differentiating between family members was “the point”. Seren had joked that taking a roll call at meetings must be very difficult. Ward had not laughed.

‘Yes,’ said Seren. ‘Thank you for coming. Have a seat. I need to speak to you about these disappearances I’ve been reading about. There doesn’t seem to be much information available. I was hoping you could fill me in on what’s going on.’

Ward sat down and looked rather solemn, Seren thought. ’There isn’t a lot of information available at this point, Ma’am. I sent out a team to investigate but one of them has not come back and the other two tried to wipe their own memories before they got back.’

A shiver of cold ran down Seren’s back at the mention of a memory wipe. She did not know why but she always felt uncomfortable when the process was brought up. Erasing part of a person’s memory always seemed like erasing part of the person. In the digital world, memory of past experiences was the only thing that truly made a person who they are.

‘So we have no clear reports at all?’ asked Seren.

Ward shook her head. ‘Not at this stage.’

‘Do you have any ideas about what is going on?’

‘It could be another suicide cult. The Pax Non Esse event is still fresh is some people’s minds.’

Pax Non Esse, literally “peace through non existence”, was a cult from the latter half of 2999 which believed the turn of the millennium would bring forth an age of destruction, with computer viruses emerging that would destroy the supercomputer clusters that ran the virtual worlds, including Carcer Ridge.

According to their leader, “Doctor” Francis Heron, whose title did not appear to have been granted by any university in the digital or material realms, the only way the digital worlds would survive was for everyone to end their own life processes, format all the computers in every cluster, and restart the realms from scratch.

How anyone had been taken in by such a cult was beyond Seren’s ability to understand. That someone would take their own life so others could live was one thing, but for someone to suggest everyone take their own life so new people could possibly live in the future was just crazy.

‘So you’re saying that if there is a cult out there, one of your investigative team was taken in by it? What about the others? I don’t think we’ve seen a brain wiping cult before, have we?’

‘No, we have not. However, I honestly don’t believe that’s what is going on here. In their reports, the two surviving investigators talked about “strange clouds”, “colours from outside the natural spectrum”, and a “black goat with a hundred spindly legs”. Apparently the sight of all this was too much for them and they wanted to rid their minds of the visions before they were driven to suicide by the “hideous thoughts” the visions had caused them.’

Seren held up a hand to stop Ward for a moment. ‘Hang on, a minute. Is all this for real?’

‘As real as you or I, Madam President.’

‘We are both computer-generated people sitting in a computer-generated room. Our real-ness, or lack thereof, has been debated for centuries.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Okay, let me put it another way. Haven’t we all seen some crazy stuff over the years? I went to an art gallery last May where the artist gave the impression that there were bubbles of reversed time floating around the gallery. Another exhibit was a recreation of the surface of Manticorius, including a working model of a village from the long dead civilisation archaeologists had found there. That was pretty damn weird, I can tell you, but there was nothing that made me want to claw my own mind out.’

‘I understand your scepticism, Ma’am,’ said Ward. From the tone of her voice, Seren suspected she was being diplomatic with the truth. ‘However, the consistency of the statements in each investigator’s report coupled with what little information we could glean from their memory snapshots suggest there is indeed something out there that is harming those that come into contact with it.’

‘I would like to see these memory snapshots.’

‘I thought you would, Ma’am.’

Ward offered an information transfer to Seren. The offer appeared in Seren’s mind like an epiphany.

She accepted the offer and stored the new memories in a walled-off area of her brain, for safety’s sake. When she accessed the memories she was immediately glad she had taken this precaution.

What she saw in her mind was from the point of view of both investigators at the same time. This experience was disconcerting enough but the information came in short flashes of sound and vision before jumping forward in time, sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes. It was like being back at the time bubble exhibit again, only this time without any prior warning. Seren felt sick to her stomach just from the passage of time itself.

What she saw in the snapshot was a creature taller than the tallest trees she had seen in her childhood back in Ireland, before her transfer into Carcer Ridge. It walked with a slow, lolloping gait as if the digital world was foreign to it, or it was somehow not used to using the immense array of long, thin legs that sprang from its bulbous sides.

The legs were long, many-jointed and reached up above the bulk of the creature in an arch that reminded Seren of a spider’s legs, before swooping down to the ground and ending in a needle-sharp point that Seren had no trouble imagining would not leave a mark on even the most delicate surface. Each leg was covered in row upon row of tiny, black and immensely coarse hairs. The legs themselves were a deep grey that seemed to suck in light from around them, and yet they glowed almost imperceptibly with an inner energy.

The bulk of the creature was definitely goat-like in its overall shape but the body was bloated and wallowed left and right as the creature moved. Its matted fur was grey-black and shone by virtue of being caked in grease, which no doubt accounted for the fact that the creature stank like rotted flesh. The stench was so strong, Seren’s ancient gag reflex kicked in the moment the smell hit her nostrils and it took a herculean feat of dexterity to cut the connection to the memories and prevent herself from vomiting on the spot.

Her mind returned to the present. Ward was watching her with a look of concern on her handsome face. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

‘What was that thing?’ Seren asked. She was panting, her stomach was spinning, her heart pounding. She reached into her mind and turned off these vestigial portions of her anatomy, which now existed only because she was so used to them being there.

‘All we know is it is referred to as “the black goat”. We don’t know who made it, where it came from or why.’

‘We’re going to need to get to the bottom of this quickly, before anyone else gets hurt.’

Seren reached over to her desk computer and tapped a button on the screen. The image of Mortimatrius, the Secretary of State for Internal Affairs, appeared on the monitor. His image was that of a short, fat creature made from blown glass, with a blue tint. Inside his glassy frame, a dozen butterflies flapped their wings, flitting here and there in an apparently random fashion.

‘Madam President,’ said Mortimatrius. His eerie glass face flowed and morphed into a smile. ‘How can I be of service today?’

‘I need to see you immediately. We have a major national security problem.’

‘I’m on my way.’

By the time Seren had tapped the screen again to turn off the communication, the image of Mortimatrius was forming from a cloud of blue gas in the corner of the room. Seren and Ward waited for him to fully compose himself before continuing.

‘Thank you for coming,’ said Seren. ‘Ward has just briefed me on this “Black Goat” problem. Have you heard of it?’

‘I have, Ma’am. I received a report this morning. I have to admit I’m at a loss as to what this thing could be.’

‘I need you both to combine your efforts and put together a team that can investigate this problem. I want them to report back to me with preliminary findings in 48 hours.’

Seren willed a folder full of paperwork into existence on her desktop. She opened the folder and signed several forms, then passed the folder to Mortimatrius.

‘Here is authorisation to enter what areas you deem necessary, question who you deem necessary and request access to personal and top secret documents you deem necessary.’

‘Do you believe the situation warrants involvement in personal affairs?’ asked Ward.

‘I don’t know,’ said Seren. ‘But I would rather this were not held up while we debate the problem if it arises.’

Seren looked from Ward to Mortimatrius and back again. They were both clearly uneasy about what she was asking them to do but she knew both of her Ministers well enough to know they wanted an answer to this situation as much as she did.

‘I want you to find out why these people have disappeared and, if possible, bring them back home safely. Find out what this Black Goat is and whether it is a threat to Carcer Ridge or its citizens. If it’s a threat, find out who created it and why.’

‘We’ll do what we can,’ said Mortimatrius.

‘Thank you. That will be all.’

When the two Ministers had finished teleporting out of her office, Seren accessed her memories and, with a feeling of revulsion about what she was doing, deleted the imported memory of the Black Goat. As much as memory erasing was abhorrent in her opinion, some things were still best left unseen.

Chapter Three

Carcer Ridge, 25 September 3124

‘If you want my advice, I’d look to a partnership with Helios or Demeter. They are trouncing you in the polls right now and you could really increase your chances if you had one of those guys on your side.’

‘Helios is a fool,’ said Seren. ‘He’s all teeth and charm. He looks good until he opens his mouth, then it’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that he’s not got any brain at all.’

Seren stood up and walked to the window that took up the entire back wall of her office at the top of Petersen Tower, the presidential seat of power in Hildenbede, the central city of Carcer Ridge. The view of the digital city below had taken her breath away when she first saw it, two hundred years before. She had been seventy then, still young and easily impressed by all the delights the world had to show her.

Two hundred years. Where had the time gone?

‘Maybe it’s time to just accept defeat gracefully,’ she said. ‘Bow out before the polls turn against us entirely.’

‘It’s your decision, Madam President,’ said Joseph. ‘But I would recommend against it. How your administration ends will define it as much as everything you accomplished.’

Seren laughed a short laugh and turned back to her old friend. ‘I don’t think we can really talk about accomplishments, can we? In all the time we’ve been here, nothing has happened. I’m President of a world that, despite its fluidity, never actually changes anything important. Who is in charge doesn’t matter, everything continues just as it always has.’

‘Now that’s the voice of someone who has given up.’

Joseph stood up and walked over to Seren, putting his arms around her and hugging her. She returned the gesture and the two old friends stood there for several minutes, saying nothing, comfortable in each other’s company.

‘You know I’ll support you whatever you decide to do,’ said Joseph.

‘I know. Thank you. You’re a good friend.’

Seren pulled away and walked back to her desk. Despite the centuries of acclimatisation to the digital world where information was available in her mind just for the wanting, she had never lost her Earthly roots. She turned on the screen that stood on the huge wooden desk and scanned the latest news reports.

‘What’s this about people disappearing?’ she asked.

Joseph’s expression glazed over for a fraction of a second while he read through the reports in his own mind. ‘I don’t know. There isn’t a lot of information available.’

Seren brought up a barrage of information from the security, defence and immigration departments. None of her ministers had any idea what was going on either. The people the reports mentioned had not left Carcer Ridge, that much was certain. That was all that was certain.

Seren brushed a couple of strands of her short, black hair out of her face and looked over at Joseph.

‘It seems we have one more problem to deal with before this administration is over.’

2

Seren pulled her vision back from her usual first person perspective, looking out through her own eyes, and looked down on herself from a short distance outside her body. She glided around her digital self, checking her appearance before she headed in to a meeting with the Secretary of State for Immigration, who also dealt with the occasional case of a citizen leaving Carcer Ridge for pastures new.

Seren was shorter than the average citizen, standing a respectable five foot eight inches tall by traditional measurements. Her black hair was shoulder length and pinned behind her head with faux oriental hairpins. Her skin was pale, her features a mixture of Irish and Japanese that had been carefully crafted for her by a team of style gurus when she had first entered politics back in her mid fifties.

Looks had been important back then and she had always been very careful to project exactly the right image to make people believe she was just the right kind of strong, upstanding and trustworthy citizen to lead them through the changes Carcer Ridge had needed to undergo if it was to blossom and achieve its full potential as a new nation.

Now change was something the people looked at with suspicion, if they ever even considered it at all. Sure each citizen talked of the fluidity of the digital world, where nothing was stable and everything was destroyed as easily as it was created. Buildings, artworks, even whole communities grew, shone brightly for a few years, and then disappeared; to be replaced by the next fad. To Seren this was not change, this was fashion. Society was stagnant beneath a veneer of creativity, and she hated herself for creating the kind of world where that could happen.

Now, after two hundred years of being the only real choice for President of this nation of self-delusion there might be someone else who could take up the reins. This Demeter person – did they have a second name, or was that passé amongst the ‘in crowd’ these days? – might just be the breath of fresh air she had been hoping for since she had taken office again, becoming only the second President in Carcer Ridge’s long history to serve twenty-five consecutive terms.

Only James Wyatt Stevenage, the second President, had beaten her and she had no intention of trying to match his thirty term reign. Carcer Ridge had been a very different place at the start and nobody had really believed it would last more than a few experimental years once its founder, Professor George Emelius Burrows-Hodgkinson, stepped down and opened the fledgling city state to a new form of “open parliament” democracy. Stevenage had given Carcer Ridge much needed stability, and for that everyone who now called it home owed him a debt of thanks.

Not that most of the citizenry even knew who Stevenage was, now. History was not one of the country’s strongest points. Seren had wanted to change that, to build on the nation’s heritage, but aside from an annual arts festival celebrating all that digital immortality meant to the participants, nothing she had tried had stuck. People in Carcer Ridge did not care for studying history. With most of the important figures from the country’s past still hanging around somewhere, anyone who was interested did not need to look up information. They could just give the people involved a call and go over for a chat.

Seren pulled her vision back to her preferred first person viewpoint and initiated the transfer sequence that took her from her home to her office in Petersen Tower. From her point of view, the transfer was instantaneous. She requested the transfer and the supercomputer array running Carcer Ridge immediately paused her consciousness while it switched her data from the cluster of processors responsible for her home area to the cluster of processors responsible for running the Tower. When the transfer was complete, she was unpaused in her new location. The entire process took less than a second to complete; which from the point of view of a citizen inside Carcer Ridge could seem like up to an hour, depending on preferred running speeds.