Dead Man's Resolution (6 page)

The back of his office appeared to be a nightmarish landscape, Gigeresque in its monochromatic rolling hills. Hideous bipedal creatures sprinted toward Bracket as he blew them to pieces with his BFG.

Bracket seemed to be gleefully engaged in his game until Gabby cleared her throat. He checked over his shoulder, letting one of the creatures approach dangerously close. As the creature leaped, the landscape disappeared and was replaced with a plain cream wall with a picture of dogs playing poker on it.

The BFG in his hands had disappeared as well and Bracket pointed to the chair across from his desk.

"Thank you for coming, Ms. DeCorte."

Gabby was still glancing over Bracket's shoulder at the wall where the shooter game had been.

"I like to keep my old marine score at a good level. Never know when they might need me again," said Bracket. "Especially with things picking up on the Southlands front."

As long as Gabby had been alive, the GSA had been fighting the Southlands. Gabby rolled her eyes and took the seat as Bracket settled onto his. The Administrator clasped his hands together on the desk and sighed heavily.

The muscles in Bracket's jaw tightened and Gabby's stomach rolled in response. As she waited for him to speak, it seemed like the hair on Bracket's head bristled up like an angry dog.

"The LifeGame Integrity Engineers have detected unauthorized access and modifications to your personal reality files," said Bracket.

Gabby wanted to rip her gaze away from Bracket's, but she knew that would give away her guilt. Instead, she willed herself to maintain an innocent and slightly curious face. She'd mastered this face after years of probing questions from her parents.

"Yes. I can see you're perplexed as we are." When Bracket said this, Gabby nearly lost her practiced expression, because it implied he wasn't talking about her hack. Now she really was curious.

"What files were modified?" she asked.

Bracket sighed again, and she could tell he was visibly disturbed about something.

"Ms. DeCorte. Have you seen anything strange recently? Unexpected reality intrusions? Projections of people you don't know appearing suddenly?"

Visions of the boy and the owl's shadow returned to her suddenly. Gabby steeled her face so she wouldn't give anything away.

"I see something came to mind," said Bracket. "Now we're not interested in the pranks you students play on each other, minor hacks to personal files that turn someone's hair green, or give them a beard. We know about those and choose to ignore them. They're good practice for University anyway."

Gabby let herself relax. Bracket wasn't interrogating her about the track hack. But her curiosity had risen to new heights. Someone had been hacking her personal files?

"I haven't seen anything. Has someone been messing with my LifeScore?"

Bracket shook his head. "Oh, no. That's nearly impossible. The LGIE are foremost focused on maintaining untampered scores. If those could be messed with, then the whole system would collapse. How else could we know who deserved to be rewarded with more responsibility?"

Gabby knew all too well about how difficult it was to modify a LifeScore. That's why her hacks focused on spoofing tests rather than the score itself.

"So you haven't seen any reality intrusions?"

"No, Administrator Bracket. I sure haven't," said Gabby.

Bracket visibly attempted to soften his expression, but his muscles refused to oblige. Eventually, he gave up and just nodded his head.

"Am I free to go?" asked Gabby.

"Yes, you may."

Gabby moved toward the door, expecting to hear the shooter game start up behind her, but when Bracket said her name, a cold shiver went up her back.

"Ms. DeCorte."

She turned around slowly, expecting that the earlier conversation had been a ruse and now they were springing the trap on her. Gabby swallowed and faced Administrator Bracket, clutching her arms across her chest.

Administrator Bracket appeared to be conflicted, frowning in concentration. Then he seemed to make a decision.

"Ms. DeCorte. You're a good LifeGamer. One of the tops in the region in fact. Your TPS scores are off the charts. The book on you is that you're holding back on your true potential."

"TPS scores?" This was a new one on Gabby.

"Thoughts per second. We get certain brain diagnostics from your neural actuator."

Bracket paused, letting his words sink in. Gabby wasn't sure what she was more surprised about: that they were watching how her brain worked, or that they thought she was holding back. She didn't
think
she was holding back.

"So I'm going to tell you this because you may one day be running the system. So I feel I can trust you with this information," said Bracket.

Gabby nodded slowly, still wondering if all this was a trap somehow.

"It seems certain elements outside of our society, called the Frags - their name, not ours - have been lurking around your personal files. We can't tell if they've modified anything, well, since we can't check them. But I should warn you."

Gabby put her hands on her hips. "What do you mean messing with my personals?"

"The LGIE believe the Frags may have modified your files. Might be trying to influence your views on reality." Bracket paused again, clearly conflicted. "They've requested that I ask you if they can verify your personals. They might be able to get authorization to do so without your permission, but they'd like to not make this a big deal."

"A big deal? My personal files are a
huge
deal." Gabby raised her voice louder than she intended, but she couldn't help it. "My whole life is in those files. I don't want anyone snooping around in them just to find out if these, so called, Frags have modified something. My virus protection is up to date, thank you."

Administrator Bracket waited until she had stopped, then smoothed his hand across his desk.

"Given the nature of the LGIE's request, I'll forgive you for this outburst, this once. Please keep control of your emotions, Ms. DeCorte."

Gabby dropped her gaze and her shoulders slumped. "I'm sorry, Administrator Bracket."

"Well, the request is made. And it's clear from your response that you're not willing to give them access freely," said Bracket. "So you can return to your Advanced Game Theory class."

Gabby had her hand on the doorknob when Bracket spoke again.

"You might want to have a talk with your parents about this. I'm sure the LGIE will be contacting you soon and you'll want to know what your options are."

Gabby nodded and left his office. The hallways were dreadfully quiet. She wanted to turn on some mood music but she couldn't muster the thought to activate it. The silence suited her anyway.

Instead of going to class, she circled the hallways, kitting her bad mood so she wouldn't scream. When at last she'd dropped agro, she pinged Zaela and told her to meet outside school at the FunCar lot.

Their LifeScores were both above rank after the morning and she needed a sanity break, even if it cost them a few points. Plus the rest of afternoon had few opportunities to score.

There were opportunities to gain a few points where they were going, too. If they played their cards right. The hard part was going to be convincing Zaela. She hated the Library Museum.

Chapter Three

Gabby met Zaela at the edge of the school grounds. The school lawn appeared as a perfectly manicured green field with bushes shaped into different animals.

"Hey Z, your outfit looks totally twinked," said Gabby.

Zaela stopped and put a hand on one hip, her eyebrow raising as her head tilted. She wore a yellow shirt that glowed like a small sun and a pink ruffled skirt. Black cat figures on the skirt danced around her waist, sometimes disappearing into the folds.

"What's up, Gabs? You only compliment my clothes when you're going ask me for something. At least you didn't compliment my skin color, then I
know
you're in deep," said Zaela.

Gabby smirked. "Well, since you mention it. Your skin
is
looking particularly bronze today." She paused. "And as always, it goes well with your silky black hair."

Zaela rolled her eyes. "Next you're going to be asking me to go to the Library Museum."

"Well actually." Gabby held out her hands, palms up. "I am. Pretty please? I'll let you pick all the games in the FunCar."

"But Blair the Chair is so weird."

Gabby hugged her friend's arm and jumped up and down. "Please...," she whined.

"Fine. Only because you're my best friend." Zaela pointed her finger at Gabby. "But I get to pick all the games. You promised."

"Fine," said Gabby. "Let's get going."

The two girls stepped off the school property and the manicured lawns and animal bushes disappeared. Instead they were replaced with rolling ads from Tata Motors. The makers of the FunCar owned the available ad space around the school. Once the two girls were off school grounds, they were assaulted by the wallpaper-like ads.

"Bydaway, your outfit is pretty fragadelic, too," remarked Zaela, as the girls made their way to the nearby FunCar lot. "For a pale and skinny blonde chick, anyway."

"I put it on random wardrobe generator this morning. I had other things on my mind," said Gabby.

The FunCar lot was filled with hundreds of bubble shaped cars with four puffy tires. The vehicles were used by any citizen to get from one place to another.

When Gabby snapped her fingers at a nearby car, its blue exterior was replaced by a white one with skulls. Each skull had a pink bow on it.

The bubble shield retracted enough for the two girls to climb inside. Once the two girls were strapped in, Gabby commanded the FunCar to take them to the Library Museum.

"We're going to play Brush Battle," said Zaela.

Gabby groaned. She really would rather play Geostack or Shared Destruction. Those would actually get them some decent points while they were skipping school, maybe even breaking even for the day. Brush Battle was strictly artistic and barely got more than she got for brushing her teeth in the morning.

"You promised."

Gabby nodded. "I did."

"I need a break from all that score grinding." Zaela paused, a thoughtful and sad expression shading her face. "I wish creativity scored higher in LifeGame."

"Sorry Z." Another time she might have tried to talk her out of Brush Battle, but she sensed her friend's need and let it go.

As the game started up, she felt the FunCar lurch forward, and brushes appeared in their hands. The sense-webs in her skin made the brush feel real beneath her fingertips, but she wanted to squeeze it tighter to get a better grip and that screwed up her control of the brush tip.

The car's bubble disappeared as a surrealistic landscape was painted over their eye-screens, making it appear they were floating through a rounded and droopy landscape of pastel watercolors populated by strange creatures including one with a candy-striped hat.

Zaela brightened along with the surroundings. "Ohh...Dr. Seuss!"

"Who?" Gabby had never heard of this Doctor, nor why he would be in an art game, but before she could ask again, a floating canvas appeared before her.

The object of the game was to pick an object out of the landscape and paint it. Scoring was given for closeness of the reproduction. Zaela's paintings were always spot on. Gabby always thought her own appeared to be different colored blobs with lines sticking out of them.

By the time they reached the Library Museum, the girls had played Brush Battle three times. When they climbed out of their FunCar, Zaela exclaimed, "I think I got almost five points for that."

They'd both gotten over three hundred points for the morning's track hack, but Gabby didn't say anything. She didn't want to ruin Zaela's good mood before they got into the Library.

The FunCar dropped them off near a colossal stone building without any digital adornment. No ads played across its walls, nor were there any murals or paintings. The Library Museum was like a gray block of stone resting in a vat of rainbow ice cream.

"Remember, no skins," said Gabby. "You know how Blair gets."

Zaela huffed. "Not like it matters anyway. The walls interfere with the signals and she doesn't have repeaters. The world gets all fuzzy and out of place in there."

The girls' outfits disappeared as they entered the Library. Flesh-colored and skin-tight undersuits covered their bodies from thighs to neck. The underclothes ensured that no one could peek underneath their digital skins and see them naked.

Inside, Gabby took a long, deep breath, inhaling the delicious scents of real paper and ink.

"What are you smelling? It smells all musty in here," said Zaela.

Gabby ignored her friend and went in past the entryway. The Library Museum wasn't much of a museum as museums go. It was more of a storage facility for books, paid for by some long dead rich person. Blair the librarian had never told her who.

The massive space that disappeared into the gloom was filled from floor to ceiling with books. Even the spaces on top of the shelves were cluttered with books, that looked like at one time had been stacked neatly, but with time slowly slumped to the edge.

Even on the shelves, books were double and triple stacked. Blair utilized every available space within the facility to store books, barely keeping a wide enough aisle for her chair to fit.

Gabby cupped her hands around her mouth. "Blair! It's me, Gabriella!"

The words were absorbed by the endless rows, crammed with books.

"Why can't Blair the Chair mind-text like a normal human?" muttered Zaela.

"Why do that when I have great hearing?" asked a mechanical voice from a nearby alcove.

Zaela squeaked and put both hands across her mouth. Her eyes were wide and her face wilted in embarrassment.

A woman in a motorized chair, covered in tubes and wires, wheeled into view. Her skin was a rich chocolate, much darker than Zaela's, but she had kinky hair where Zaela's was straight. The hair was tangled and held back with a bit of twine.