Chaos Magic (5 page)

Chapter
9

BAPHOMET’S BUM

“Cornflour,” the detective said. “That’s the analysis, but then there’s this.”

He held up his phone and I saw the intricate feathering around the repeated criss-cross symbol, delineating the confluence of intersecting time-lines, the twin orgasm of collapsing vortices. I had seen similar designs before; they depicted, what is to some, a terrifying construct: a divine and profane symmetry.

“Something or nothing?” he asked.

“Very much something. Used to summon spirits from the Loa – it is a ceremonial design called a Vever. Used in Haitian voodoo – but also very similar to the sigils used to open and close the Tunnels of Set – that European occultists have been compiling and using for centuries,” I said, hoping that I was not diluting the detective’s attention.

He had tracked me down at the Institute; not too hard to do as I was on the website and my name plastered all over various research papers. It was my lunch hour and we were back on our bench, only this time I had a flask of pumpkin soup made by my Polish landlady. I had offered to share it with my lunch guest, but he declined. Nobody was flying kites today, only the odd dedicated jogger passed by, the cold wind and prospect of rain keeping most sensible folk indoors.

In fact Detective Z’s timing was impeccable; he called me just when it had occurred to me that he could help me with a looming and seemingly intractable problem: The well-meaning board of trustees of St Mary’s Church of the ancient parish of Mortlake had finally scraped together enough cash to renovate the church’s historic tower. I had arrived there the previous week to find half a dozen bone-headed scaffolders beginning to construct their steel matrix around the home of my ‘secret place’. This was a disaster – these tattooed monkeys would be climbing all over the place for at least three months and I could see no way of keeping them from happening upon the lost library and me. I could see the headlines in the local paper all too clearly –
Lost Library of John Dee Found
. My blood ran cold. The jig, as they say, would be well and truly up.

Before I could outline my ‘problem’ to Detective Z he asked me another question.

“The girls, there are four of them now.”

He rubbed the stubble on his jaw, looking troubled by the idea. Maybe he was thinking of Lorna, maybe not.

“What happened in Waterloo, did you go?” I asked. I find direct questions are always best. He was a policeman and so understood this to be so.

He was shaking his head by now.

“I didn’t find her – but then I was late. Unforgivable really and I have been torturing myself ever since. Found this afterwards though, in my coat pocket.”

He held up a yellow memory stick.

“Oh, what’s on it?”

“Gibberish – I thought maybe you might want to take a look.”

I was much too distracted by my problem to give my attention to anything else. Tomorrow was Saturday and I planned to return to Mortlake to check on the progress of the workmen. I had some distant and desperate hope that Detective Z could somehow use his police powers to halt the renovation, make it all go away so that I could just get on with my research.

There was a gust of wind and a flurry of hail. The soup would have to wait.

“Are you free tomorrow?” I asked whilst standing up and turning up my coat collar to prevent the sharp particles of ice from attacking me; I had foolishly come out without a scarf. “I need to show you something in Mortlake.”

We arranged to meet at the same pub where I had first met Alan.

“It’s at the end of Tinder Box Alley,” I called out after the departing detective.

He had a cozy police vehicle to retreat to, parked nearby on double yellows with apparent impunity. I by contrast had a twenty-minute walk back to the Institute. It was only when I got back and was making a kerfuffle out of hanging my coat up by the radiator, in order to dry it off, that I found that I had inexplicably acquired the Detective’s memory stick, having held it unawares in my clenched right hand.

When I took a look, I too found the various folders to be full of incomprehensible data. After finally warming up and chowing down, courtesy of the pumpkin soup, I went down to the basement to see Lloyd – my tame IT guy.

“Yeah, I’ll take a look,” he said without taking his eyes away from the oversize monitor, it was the only source of illumination in the room.

“Where are all your staff?” I asked.

“Working off-site and Toby is at a developer’s conference,” he looked at me over his monitor. “I’ll be presenting there tomorrow.”

It was impossible to tell if he was thrilled or miffed by the prospect. Lloyd was a big guy, sporting a chinstrap beard and a ponytail, who liked to speculate about the imminent ‘data Armageddon’ after a couple of pints of ale. He was actually good company and probably the brightest person in the whole Institute.

It was three and a half hours later and I was packing up for the day when he called me.

“Come and take a look – you really need to see this,” was all he said.

As I approached the basement office that was known as the ‘IT Build Room’, where Lloyd and his cronies had their racks of equipment as well as the best coffee machine in the Institute, I could hear the wail of police sirens interspersed by muffled explosions. When I entered I saw Lloyd and Toby sitting side by side, each of them wrestling with complicated looking games controllers and following the action on the wall mounted monitor. It took a couple of minutes for my presence to register, which must have coincided with a lull in the action because I knew both of them to gaming addicts.

“It’s a massive multiplayer game,” said Lloyd.

“It’s a bit noughties but not bad,” added Toby.

“That is what is on the USB stick?” I asked, less than thrilled by the news.

“Yeah, it’s called –
Nest of Loops
,” said Lloyd, handing the yellow item back to me. “That’s it,” he shrugged. “I thought we knew them all but it’s new to us, we might just carry on playing for a bit, if that is alright, we’ve downloaded it..”

I knew they would probably carry on for half the night. I nodded my assent.

“Just install it on your machines C Drive and you will be good to go; I can do that for you, if you like,” said Lloyd.

A kind offer, he knew I was IT illiterate.

“But even though the action is a little low-tech, as I said, you will still need a graphics card and a faster processor.”

“Maybe later, and thanks for that,” I said, heading towards the door.

“See you later,” Toby called out to me as I left, then, obviously speaking to Lloyd he said, “Okaay, let’s get back to beta world.”

I stopped in my tracks.

Chapter 10

LOA IN THE DROME

Many people feared Eddie Brocade, far fewer feared Simon Magus; this was only because nobody knew who he was, such was the skill with which he had threaded his shadowy way between this place or that, this world or that world. They waited impatiently for the next fight to begin as they sat side by side in the second row of the Babadrome.

It was whispered by the staff back at the
Vertical Abyss
that Eddie Brocade and Simon Magus often travelled to beta world accompanied by a posse of armed motorcycle outriders. Entering the riot zones just for the sport of it, and bringing back trophies – prisoners, women, or sometimes just artworks - to the
Vertical Abyss
, where they disappeared from view.

Cage fighting was not their thing, women or no women. The spectator value of the first fight had been seriously undermined because the overriding strategies employed by the Kage Kandy were of the ‘lay and pray’ variety – both protagonists rolling around on the canvas and neither seeming capable of any fight winning initiatives. Thus, by the end, some members of the crowd were booing; despite the de rigueur scanty shorts and tops providing a distracting display of the female anatomy. It was on this occasion insufficient compensation for the appetites of the fight-hungry and predominately male crowd.

When Lorna and Chloe had entered the arena, each having made their way through the crowd before entering the steel cage, the crowd had perked up; both fighters had reputations as ‘female firecrackers’, as the commentator had enthusiastically described them.

“I prefer the other one,” commented Simon Magus, as the two women assumed the required stance.

Lorna’s opponent was one of the most striking fighters from the all-female Strike Girl stable; a large-breasted, chisel featured Amazon, her blonde hair cut short, as was the convention, and a host of wins under belt, courtesy of her speed, aggression and Muay Thai pedigree; a popular fighter because of her Kage Kandy status.

The first round had been a letdown and so at the start of the second as Lorna began to circle her opponent, she was aware it was time to put some pain Chloe’s way. It was at the self-same millisecond that she began her signature take down move, a flying Cisco, that Agim’s message had flashed across the periphery of her consciousness. It was a distraction that she could have done without.

Nobody likes to end up on their ass, especially in front of several thousand people and live on national TV, but it had happened and here was Chloe coming at her with the express intent of using Lorna’s head as an anvil in an upcoming and seemingly unavoidable ‘ground and pound’ scenario. Lorna twisted away but made contact with the cage. Chloe pounced. The crowd suddenly came alive.

In the second row Simon Magus stifled a yawn.

“Doesn’t look like your man, Agim Volte, is going to show, does it?” he asked of his companion.

Eddie was leaning forward, his lips drawn back a little showing some of his perfect dental work; the slight upturn on the corners of his mouth suggesting both a smile and a grimace. He shifted in his seat as if to accommodate some preludial trouser action that was occurring beneath the radar. His plans for Lorna were taking shape.

Some people do not like the idea of watching women hitting each other in the face. Men doing it is simply barbaric, something that is recognized as proof that the male of the species is a barbarian. With women it is seen as aberrational in the extreme – not so in beta world. Get real, its citizens would tell you, for women are as adept at dispensing punishment as nourishment. Luckily on this particular evening, Lorna’s ground skills prevented any such description from being necessary. Before Chloe could land a single blow with her fist, elbow or knee, Lorna had snaked out a leg and then the other, putting a choke-lock around her opponent’s throat; the submission swiftly followed.

Chapter 11

THE DYSTOPIAN PRESENT

“It’s set in some dystopian future, or actually more like a dystopian present,” said Toby, grinning at his own cleverness.

“And where’s this?” I asked.

“London – but not as we know it,” this time it was Lloyd who responded. “Want to play some?”

“I’ll just watch,” I said.

This seemed to suit the two addicts who then set to work on their endorphin levels; these men certainly loved their toys.

Even as an observer I experienced some of that
immersive experience
that I had often heard about as being the Holy Grail of web design and especially game design. I could almost smell the burning cars as Toby used his ‘Placater’, a kind of stun-gun, on another gaggle of looters who were about to turn nasty. Through the avatar’s eyes and ears the players were able to experience this virtual reality and move around freely, down streets, into buildings, across bridges and into subterranean tunnels where danger lurked at every turn.  After about ninety minutes of this the boys laid down their controllers and agreed to
park it
; I asked what this meant.

“It’s played in what’s called a ‘persistent world’, which means that although the guys we are playing against will lay down their weapons too and we will do a body-count and then take our scores forward with us, the game will carry on without us and this ‘
beta world’ will have developed and evolved by the time we next play,” explained Lloyd.

“I need pizza,” said Toby.

I ignored his request and ploughed on.

“So is the whole of London one big riot zone?” I asked.

“No, looks like the hotspots are marked on a map and rated as to the level of violence.”

“And what about everywhere else?” I said.

“Why would you want to go there?” said Toby, annoyed that we were not on our way to the Pizzeria.

“Usually the graphics go flat once you get away from the action, in these kinds of games,” answered Lloyd, clicking around on the console and bringing up various locations. “That’s weird!” He exclaimed. “What’s odd here is that the world away from the action hot spots seems pretty developed too,” he shrugged and went to power down.

I saw this to be true, as he had panned around and zoomed-in on the streets in riot-free area, I saw that people were just going about their business as normal.

“Wait,” I said.

Before we left I made Lloyd check the documentation files to see who the makers of the game were.

“Entropy Productions, England, is all it says.”

I bought them both pizza.

* * *

The next day I threaded my way down the lost byways of Mortlake to keep my appointment with Detective Z. The Sunday lunchtime throng were crowded at the far end of the bar watching a rugby match on the TV – only two customers were enjoying the glow of the open fire: Detective Z and Alan, sitting together like old chums.

After replenishing their glasses I settled down between them, telling them of my concern over the renovation work to the tower. Detective Z gave a blank look.

“Why shouldn’t they fix it up if they have the funds?” he asked taking a draught of the dark stout we were all drinking.

I let Alan explain. When it was settled that together they would come up with a plan to deter or delay the builders from continuing – I changed the subject by describing the contents of the data stick.

“Joel Barlow,” said Alan.

“The writer of those books –
Alembic Valise
and..?” I said.

“I arrested him once,” Detective Z interjected unhelpfully.

“It’s a kind of twenty first century camera obscura, pointing at beta world” said Alan, when I had finished my description of the contents of the data stick.

“Yes, but what use is it,” asked Detective Z.

“That, we have yet to ascertain, maybe we can solve your crimes, or maybe find...” I trailed off. I had been about to say –
maybe find Lorna Z
.