Fantasy in Death

9

There was a certain ritual involved in Eve’s consults with Mira. Mira would offer-and Eve would feel obliged to accept-a fancy cup of flowery tea. They both knew Eve preferred coffee, just as they both knew the tea represented Mira’s calming influence, a break from the pressure. At least for that initial few moments.

As Eve sat in one of Mira’s blue scoop chairs she noted, as usual, the office was efficient and female, like the woman who ruled it. Apparently it didn’t bother Mira in the least to discuss the criminal mind, and the horrors inflicted on victims while photos of her family looked on.

Maybe she chose calming colors in her decor and her wardrobe to counteract those horrors, and scattered those photos around to ground herself to her own reality.

It occurred to her that she herself placed no photographs in her office-not at Central, not at home. Maybe, she considered, they’d be a distraction from the work, or maybe she’d just find it disconcerting to be “watched” while she worked. Or…

Didn’t matter, didn’t apply. Such analyses and suppositions were Mira’s territory. Eve needed the mind of the killer, needed to live inside it awhile-and her own sparse, uncluttered style suited her.

She considered her work outfit, one she’d chosen by simply grabbing what seemed easiest. Summer jacket, sleeveless tank, light-weight pants, boots. Work and weather related, period.

But Mira went for a breezy suit, sort of like a peppermint-white with tiny flecks of candy pink. The flecks matched the shiny shoes with the skinny heels that set off Mira’s very nice legs. She wore her glossy brown hair in flattering waves around her soft and pretty face, and added a little bit of glitter and shine in earrings, necklace, a fancy girl’s wrist unit.

Nothing overdone, Eve thought-at least not that her sense of style could discern. Everything just so, just right. And, yeah, she admitted, calming.

“You’re quiet,” Mira remarked as she handed Eve the ritual fancy cup of flowery tea.

“Sorry. I was thinking about wardrobe.”

Mira’s eyes, blue and as soft and pretty as the rest of her, widened in both humor and surprise. “Really?”

“As it applies to profession, or activity or personality. I don’t know.” See, she told herself, thinking about personal choices, personal style, was distracting.

“Peabody and McNab are heading to DC-a little undercover job at a game con,” she continued. “She’s all about needing to go home, shed what she thinks makes her look like a cop for what she thinks will make her look like a game buff. I figure she’s still pretty much going to look like Peabody because whatever she puts on came out of her closet, right, and she has it there because she put it there.”

“True. But there are different aspects to all of us, and often our choice of outfit for a particular occasion or duty reflects that aspect. You wouldn’t wear what you’re wearing now to accompany Roarke to a formal charity function, for instance, nor what you’d worn there here at work.”

“I would if I was running late for the charity deal-or if I got tagged while I was at the deal to a scene.” Eve shrugged. “But I get you. It’d be easier if we could wear whatever we want wherever we want.”

“And this from a woman who greatly respects rules. Society and fashion have them as well. Added to that what we wear can put us in the mood for what we have to do.”

She thought of the costume the game had programmed for her. She had to admit it had put her in the mood to fight, and made the sword feel familiar and right in her hand.

“The victim’s wardrobe didn’t have a lot of variety. He had some formal stuff and more traditional business attire mixed in, but primarily he went casual. Jeans, cargos, khakis, tees, and sweaters. And a lot of that-the shirts-was logoed and printed with game and vid stuff. He lived in his work.”

“You understand that.”

“The not just what he did but who he was, yeah. Everything I’ve got says he freaking loved it. He had toys and souvies all through his place. Games and game systems everywhere.”

“He must have been a happy man, to be able to do what he loved, and what he excelled at, every day. To make his living doing what made him the happiest. And with longtime friends.”

“Happy, normal, nice-these are the kinds of words I’m getting in statements from people who knew him.”

“Yes, it fits. He had a good life, and what appears to me to be a very normal and healthy one. He had a relationship, one that mattered, kept contact with his family, maintained his friendships, had enough ambition to work to see his company succeed and grow, but not so much as to exclude those relationships and friendships.”

She drank some tea, and Eve understood Mira took those moments to line up her thoughts.

“Your report says he enjoyed the company of children in his building, and was friendly with their parents. As much as he lived his work, he appeared to be well-rounded.”

“How does a healthy, well-rounded, happy guy get his head cut off in his own secured holo-room? That’s not really a question for you,” Eve added. “That’s something EDD and I have to figure out. But why, there’s a question. The method’s significant, and required a lot of trouble, a lot of work.”

“And it’s distracting.”

“Yeah, which could be part of the point. We’re puzzling over how the hell, why the hell, and maybe who the hell slips by. What kind of person uses this method, these circumstances?”

“Decapitation is certainly a form of mutilation, and would indicate a need or desire to defile-to conquer absolutely.”

The pink drops at Mira’s ears danced a little at the shake of her head. “But the extent of the other injuries don’t jibe with that, nor does the care in accessing the victim and leaving the scene. Those are organized, layered details, studied and complex. Severing the head from the body may be symbolic as the weapon used, and the method. A game. The victim lived and breathed games, and used his head, if you will, to build his business from them.”

“Which points to a competitor, or even some wack job who didn’t like his score on the games. Wack job rings truer because there are easier ways, and less publicity generating ways, to off a rival. Or, more crazy, somebody who has some sort of violent objections to the games themselves. However whacked, he had to have superior e-skills to get in and out undetected. Unless he lives or works in the building. We’re not getting a bump there, so far.”

“The victim’s company would hire those with superior e-skills.”

“Yeah. Added to that whoever did this had to know the vic, the setup, had to know he’d be home and ready to play the game. The game disc itself would’ve been worth a considerable amount to a competitor, a rival. If that was the case, why not kill Bart before he’d locked in the disc? You do that, you’ve got it all-dead guy and the development disc for his next big thing. But he leaves it behind, which tells me either he didn’t need or want it, or it wasn’t any part of the motive. And I don’t like the second option. I think he just didn’t need it.”

“You’re looking at his associates and employees.”

“Top of the list,” Eve confirmed. “He sure as hell wouldn’t have played the game with someone who wasn’t involved in it, who didn’t know about it, and couldn’t be trusted to keep it quiet. He used those kids for test studies on games, and my impression is he enjoyed playing with them. But he wasn’t ready to take it to them yet.”

“Because, at this point, it wasn’t only a game. It was a project. An important one.”

“Yeah. He told them he had something coming up, gave them a few vague details because, I think, he was too juiced not to. But they routinely play and test games in all stages of development at the U-Play offices.”

“Where the details wouldn’t have been so vague, even to those outside the inner circle.”

“According to the log the vic played this one often-solo and multi. Various partners when he went multi. EDD’s working on digging through that to see which fantasy scenarios, if any, he might’ve played repeatedly. And against whom. I’m going to push for a copy of the disc. The partners are being fairly cooperative, but they’re dragging their heels on that.”

Mira nodded, apparently enjoying her tea. “You have an organized, detail-oriented, e-skilled killer, one I believe, as you do, the victim knew and trusted. However, the method of the murder is violent and brutal-fast, efficient, and with a warrior’s weapon. A fanciful one perhaps, but an old method. The decapitation is also warriorlike-the total defeat of an enemy, the severing of his head from his body. An execution method, and one that would take focus, skill, and strength.”

“Not your typical e-geek.”

“Not at all, the pathology diverges sharply. You may have two.”

“Yeah, I thought of that. One to plan, one to execute the plan. I’ve even considered a droid. Someone who can reprogram, avoid alerting CompuGuard, and could convince Bart to try out the game against a droid. But how did he get the droid in there, and when? How did he get the weapon in, and when?”

“A droid? That’s interesting.” Mira sat back, recrossed her fine legs as she considered. “Certainly you’d have that quick efficiency, the necessary strength. And if programmed for warrior, for sword skills, very effective. It would suit the killer’s-speaking of the human element-pathology. The use of those clever e-skills. In a way, in his way, he would have pitted himself against the victim, thereby winning the game by his proxy, and eliminating his opponent with a method that spotlighted those skills. Droids have been used in combat and in assassinations before, which is why the laws and safeguards are so stringent. It would be a challenge to subvert those laws and safeguards. The killer enjoys a challenge.”

“Maybe we need to take another look at the vic’s house droid. It’s had the once-over in EDD, and there was no sign of tampering or reprogramming. But it was already inside, already trusted, and there was more than enough time between the murder and discovery to reprogram, dispose of the weapon. Leave her just where she’s supposed to be. Or… maybe she was replaced earlier with a duplicate.”

The idea added another angle, more complications, and thinking of them Eve drank tea without realizing it. “Detail-oriented, organized, sure. But it’s a kind of showing off. Plus, it’s childishly risky. All of it. If Bart doesn’t do precisely what he did, it falls apart. He doesn’t go home early, doesn’t take the disc home, isn’t able to take the time to play the game then and there, it doesn’t work.”

“Calculated risks. Most game players take them, as do killers.”

“Especially if the player knows his opponent’s habits and style.” It just kept circling back to that. To knowledge and to trust. “There’s a lot of ego involved in game playing, especially if you take it seriously. A whole lot of ego. Nobody likes to lose. Some people practice obsessively, some cheat, some go off and sulk after a loss-and that can turn to festering obsession.”

“The more seriously one takes the game,” Mira commented, “the more real the game is to the player, the more frustrating the loss.”

Eve nodded. “Fights break out in arcades regularly. This wasn’t like that, not that passion and pissed at the moment. But it might have had its roots there, and what grew out of them turned entertainment and fantasy into something real.”

“Some have difficulty separating the violence in a game from actual violent behavior. Most use it as a release, as a way to play hero or villain without crossing lines. But for some, gaming stirs up violent tendencies already in place, held back, controlled.”

“If it wasn’t games it would be something else. But yeah, I’d say the line’s blurred between fantasy and reality. The killer’s crossed it. Maybe he’s done, he got what he wanted. He won. But it seems to me when the line’s that blurred, and it gets crossed, it’s easy to cross it again.”

“Winning can be addictive,” Mira agreed.

“So can murder.”

Going from Mira’s to EDD was something like leaving an elegant home where people engaged in quiet, intellectual discussion and being flung into an amusement park run by teenagers on a sugar rush.

Eve didn’t suffer from culture shock; she was too used to it. But both her ears and eyes began to throb when she was still ten feet outside the division.

Those who walked and worked here favored colors and patterns that stunned the system and spoke in incomprehensible codes that jumbled in the mind like hieroglyphic tiles. No one stayed still in EDD. The techs, officers, detectives all pranced, paced, or paraded to some inner music that always seemed to be on maximum speed.

Even those who sat at desks or cubes jiggled and wiggled, tapped and trilled. Feeney ran what Eve saw as a madhouse with a steady hand, even thrilled at being at the controls. In his baggy pants and wrinkled shirt, he struck her as a sturdy, unpretentious island in a riotous sea.

In his office he stood in front of a screen, frowning, mussed, normal as he moved blocks of numbers and letters-those hieroglyphics again-from location to location.

“Got a minute?” she asked him.

“Yeah, yeah. You took my boy.”

Since they were all his boys-regardless of gender-it took Eve a minute. “McNab? I asked you first.”

“I hadn’t had my coffee. You get these notions in the middle of the damn night it puts me at a disadvantage.”

“It was after six this morning.”

“Middle of the night when I didn’t crash out until two. Now I’m doing his work.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets. “I asked first,” she muttered. “What is that?”

“It’s bits and pieces we got off what’s left of the game disc-which isn’t a hell of a lot. We’ve got it running through the computer, but I thought I’d try it the old-fashioned way.”

“Any luck?”

He sent her a weary glance. “Do I look lucky?”

“Take a break for a minute.” Her fingers hit something in her pocket. She pulled it out. “Look. I have a sucking candy. It’s yours.”

He eyed it. Then shrugged and took it. “How long’s it been in there?”

“It can’t have been long. Summerset’s always bitching about stuff I leave in my pockets. They’re my pockets. Plus it’s wrapped, isn’t it?”

He unwrapped it, popped it in his mouth.

“I’ve got a couple new angles I want to try,” she began. “I want another look at the vic’s house droid.”

“She’s clean.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but two possibles. One, the killer programmed and used her for the kill, then set her back to normal. Two, he shut her down and brought in a dupe for the kill.”

“You’re looking at a droid whacking the guy’s head off?”

“I’m looking at the possibility. We’ve got two divergent styles-and Mira agrees.”

While he sucked on the candy, she ran him through the high points of the consult.

“How’d he switch the droids?”

“One step at a time, Feeney. Plus I don’t know they were switched.

It’s a possibility. If you could run a second, deeper diagnostic on it, with those two possibilities in mind, we might be able to confirm or eliminate.”

“Somebody’s going to fuck around with a droid’s programming, bypass the safeguards, they need time and privacy. And equipment.”

“They have equipment at U-Play. Plenty of them work late, stay after hours. That’s time and privacy.”

He scratched his cheek. “Maybe.”

“The second thing is going over the game logs, finding a pattern to the vic’s play. What version did he favor, who’d he play with. I want to see who he beat routinely, and what he beat them playing.”

“Now you figure somebody cut off his head because he beat them gaming?”

“It’s a factor. It plays. Why kill him during a game unless playing the game mattered? It’s showing off, isn’t it? All of this is a kind of showing off. Look how good I am. I made it real. I won.”

“Can’t tell anybody though. That takes some shine off it. You don’t play enough,” Feeney decided. “A serious gamer? He wants his name on the board. He wants the cheers and applause. He wants the glory.”

“Okay, okay, I get that.” She paced the office. “So maybe he gets that applause, that glory another way. Like… people who steal art or have it stolen then stick it in a vault where nobody can see it. It’s all theirs. It’s a kind of glory, too. The big secret, the ownership. That takes control, willpower and a hell of an ego. It took all of that to set up this kill. It took precision, brutality, and cold violence to execute the kill. So, it takes me back to maybe we’ve got two involved. Maybe two people, maybe one and a droid. Or maybe a multiple personality type, but that’s low on the list for now.”

He sucked on the candy, scratched his cheek again. “The model’s copyrighted on account it’s a replica of a vid character and there’s merchandising rights and all that. Then you gotta register a droid. There’s some getting around all of that if you buy it black or gray market, but this one’s the real deal. She’s got her registration chip and the proper model number. We got the vic’s registration and his authentication certificate. If she was messed with, she passed the standard diagnostic. We can run deeper. As for copies, well, it’s a popular model. It’s a classic for a reason. You can run a search for ownership on that, and maybe you’ll get a pop.”

“Unless it’s black or gray market.”

“If you were to run a probability, I’d bet it’s going to be high the vic would spot a knockoff. Even a dupe would have to be the real deal to get by him, if you’re asking me. Not to say they don’t have the reals off the grid, but what’s the point of going that way when it’s no crime to buy the real through proper sources? Less risky that way. We’ll go take a look at her.”

He led the way out and through to Evidence. He coded in, pressed his thumb to the plate.

Feeney, Captain Ryan, is cleared.

He opened the door to an organized pirate’s cave of electronics. Comps, ’links, screens, com and surveillance devices, all labeled, stood and sat on towering shelves. The droids were well represented as well-mechanical-looking household and yard droids, cheap mini-droids, and a number of the human replicas lined up like suspects.

Eve studied the victim’s choice of house droid. “That outfit wasn’t designed for fighting.”

“Slave-girl version, episode six. But she handles herself. Girl’s a rebel and holds her own. Helped kick the Empire’s ass.”

“Jesus, Feeney. It’s a droid-a replication of a fictional character from a space opera.”

“I’m just saying,” he muttered. “This model’s top of the line. She’s designed to exactly replicate the character physically, and she has top flight programming capabilities.”

“Did he play with it?”

“Now it’s my turn. Jesus, Dallas.”

“Not that way. Ick. Gaming. Did he use it in the games?”

“She’s programmed to participate. She’d interface with the game program, upload the scenario, the rules. She’d be a tough opponent.”

Didn’t look so tough in that outfit, Eve thought, but she’d take Feeney’s word.

“It could handle a sword?” Eve asked.

“Damn right.”

But Eve shook her head. “The vic was taller, considerably. Blow came from an upward angle, slicing down. It could’ve been standing on something, or it took the higher ground.”

“If she or one like her was programmed to do this, they’ll end up scrapping her. Damn shame. She’s a real beauty.”

She started to point out, again, it was a machine, but remembered who she was talking to. “Run it, and I’ll do the search on the model.”

“I’ll run her myself. I’ll put Callendar on analysis for the repeat scenarios and players.”

“Appreciate it. I’ll be in the field, at U-Play.”

“Hell of a place,” Feeney commented. “Too bad about the boy. He had a good thing going there.”

It didn’t surprise Eve to find the U-Play offices more subdued. The noise level remained high, but the bright, or slightly wild-eyed look of those who manned systems, cubes, offices, labs had been replaced by the solemn.

A great many wore black armbands along with their colorful attire, and she noted a great many who’d rushed around the day before weren’t in attendance today.

“Lieutenant.” Var came down the stairs from one of the upper levels. His shadowed eyes and unhealthy color showed signs of a hard, restless night. “Have you got any news?”

“We’re working some angles. You seem to be understaffed today.”

“After we… made the announcement, we gave everybody the option of staying home today. We talked about closing up, out of respect, for a couple days. But… we decided we’d all handle it better if we had the work. It’s not helping much.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Maybe it’s worse, I don’t know. Everything around here’s Bart. It’s like I’ll be working on something, and I’ll think of something I want to ask him or tell him. Then I remember I can’t. We talked to his parents. God. God. That was hard. That was horrible. We’re going to have a memorial here tomorrow afternoon, because… This is where he liked to be best. Do you think that’s right? I mean, it’s not a church or a bereavement center, but-”

“I think it’s right.”

“Okay. Well, we thought so, so… Okay.”

“Are Cill and Benny in today?”

“Yeah. Do you need to talk to them? I can-”

“I’ll get to that. Since you’re here, why don’t we talk first? How about your office?”

“I… sure.” He looked flustered at the idea of going solo, but led the way upstairs to one of the glass-walled rooms.

“Don’t you ever want some privacy?” she asked him.

“Um.” He glanced around, as if surprised.

“Never mind.” She scanned his office. Cluttered workstation, multiple comps and systems, plenty of toys, a barstool in the shape of a tentacled alien. “I’m not altogether clear on who does what around here. The four of you were partners, but you must have each had specific functions, duties, responsibilities.”

“Well, we all worked on development. Depending on who came up with the concept, we each took different stages.”

He took a seat, turned off his headset. “Benny’s primarily research, Cill’s the organizer and I guess you’d say the mom when it comes to the staff. I target the marketing. But we all overlap. It’s loose. We like it loose.”

“And Bart?”

“Development, sure. He could always take a concept and make it better. I guess you could say he had a better head for the business of the business. Accounts and clients and the money details. The profit margins, development costs, that kind of thing. We all got into it, but he could keep a lot of it up here.” He tapped his forehead. “And he was sort of the public face of U-Play.”

“He got most of the media attention.”

“He liked to get out there, mix and mingle, talk it up.” He let out a sigh, rubbed a hand over his short hair. “Benny, he gets jittery with that kind of attention. Cill gets self-conscious and uncomfortable.”

“And you?”

“I like the quiet.” He smiled. “You know, the behind-the-scenes stuff, the figuring out, the in-house stuff. Most people who do what we do aren’t so good with outside. Bart was better at it. Do you want, like, a soda or something?”

“No, I’m good. Who’ll be the public face now?”

“I… I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it. I guess we haven’t really thought about it.” He lowered his head, stared at his knees. “We have to get through today, and tomorrow, and the next.”

“Maybe you’ll bring in another partner.”

“No.” He said it quickly, firmly as his head jerked up again. “No, it’s ours. We’ll figure it out.”

“And your plans to launch Fantastical?”

“We’ll stick to the schedule. It was Bart’s baby.”

“I need that disc copy, Var.”

“We’re going to have it hand-delivered to Captain Feeney at EDD. It’s nearly ready. Um. We have papers that need to be signed. Confidentiality and all that.”

“Okay. Bart worked on the program quite a bit then. Testing it, playing various scenarios and levels.”

“Sure. We all did. It’s part of it.” His pleasant face turned earnest. “If we don’t have fun with it, why would anybody else? You really can’t market what you don’t believe in. Or you can’t do it really well.”

“Good point. So, did he have a favorite fantasy game, a scenario he liked to repeat?”

“He liked to mix it up. That’s the beauty of the game, or one of them. You can do whatever you want, depending on your mood.”

“Which ones did the two of you tend to play out?”

“Jeez, we’ve been at this for months now. A lot of them. Old West, Ancient Rome, Alternate Universe, Quests, Rescues, Gangsters, Wars. Name it, we probably played it at some point.”

“Who won?”

He laughed. “It was hard to beat Bart, but I got my share of points.” The laughter died. “It’s going to be weird, not having him in the holo. Not having him when we launch Fantastical.”

“I’m sure it will. Do you ever play with droids?”

“Droids?” Var blinked himself back. “Sure. We use them for testing, at different stages of development. Nobody keeps a secret like a droid. But in the final stages, it’s got to be human competition. We’re not selling to droids.”

“Sorry.” Cill stood in the doorway. “I saw you in here, Lieutenant. Is there anything… Is there news?”

“No, I’m sorry. Just a routine follow-up. It helps me get a clearer sense. I appreciate the time,” she said to Var, then turned back to Cill. “Why don’t we go to your office? I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”

“That’s okay. You can take as much as you need. Var, when the lieutenant’s finished with me, I think I’m going home. I’m useless here today. I’ve screwed up everything I’ve worked on, and had to back out. I’m just making a mess of things.”

“Do you want one of us to go with you?”

“No. No. I think I just need to be alone. I just need more time. You can let Benny know if you see him before I do. I’ll come in tomorrow. I’ll be better tomorrow.”

“I’ll tag you later and make sure you’re okay.” He went to her, gave her a hug that seemed both sincere and awkward to Eve. “Try to get some rest, okay?”

“Yeah. You, too.” Her bold, bright eyes watered up before she turned away. “My space is down this way, Lieutenant.”

Along the way, Eve glanced back to see Var standing behind the glass, watching them go, looking miserable.

“Do you want something?” Cill asked. “I’ve got power drinks, soft drinks, fizzies, diet and regular.”

“No, but go ahead.”

“I haven’t got a taste for anything.” Cill shoved her hands in her pockets, pulled them out again, twisted her fingers together. “You do this all the time. I mean, you talk to people who lost somebody. I was wondering if you know how long it takes before you stop forgetting you lost somebody, stop expecting to see them.”

“It’s hard,” was all Eve said.

“I don’t know if it’s going to be worse to stop forgetting, stop expecting. If it’s going to be worse when I remember all the time. It’s like… You look down at your hand, you don’t really think about it being there. It just is. And if you lost it, wouldn’t you keep expecting to see it there?”

“I guess you would. Grief counseling can help. I can give you a couple of names of people you could talk to, who might be able to help.”

“Maybe.” She shoved her mass of dark hair behind her shoulders. “I’ve never done therapy or counseling or any of that. But maybe.”

“You knew Bart a long time. The two of you must’ve worked on a lot of programming, a lot of games together.”

“Tons. We brainstorm. Sit around, get some pizza or whatever and just make stuff up. Then we get down to it. How do we translate that into a program? Benny’s point man on research. You dupe somebody’s game, you’ve wasted time and money and resources.”

“So you pitched ideas.”

“I guess you could say. We knock them off each other, spring-board them.”

“Who came up with Fantastical?”

“Ah… gosh.” She sat, brow knitted. “I’m not really sure. A lot of the concepts evolve through the brainstorming. I think… maybe Var had this idea for a fantasy game that offered user-controlled scenarios. Then I think… yeah, I think I said something about there being plenty of those already. What’s the next level? How about we take it holo, refine, seriously refine the imagery, the lag time.”

She looked away from Eve, stared through the glass wall of the office, where people zipped by. “Then, if I’ve got it right, Benny piped up with there were holo-games and programs along the lines already, and how Roarke’s company had the juiciest imagery out there. So what’s the next, next level?”

“Didn’t Bart have anything to say?”

“Oh yeah, he hangs back sometimes because he’s working on it in his head.” She rose, got one of the power drinks.

Moved well, Eve thought, thinking of the yoga classes. Strong and fluid.

“You sure you don’t want?”

“Yeah, thanks anyway.”

Cracking the tube, Cill sat, then after one sip set the drink aside. “I guess I don’t really want it either. I forgot where I was. Oh yeah, so we kept tossing stuff around, back and forth like, and Bart says not just juicier imagery. Full sensory load, smart tech. Military uses smart tech for training. We apply that to the game, add the full sensory, go full-out on imagery.”

She picked up the drink, just held it. “It’s a big investment, of time, energy, and money, but he really sold it to us. He was like, ‘We don’t just offer a menu of choices for mix and match. We open it up.’ Not just user-controlled, but the user can literally program his fantasy, every element, or mix his elements in with default elements. We just kept kicking it until we had the basic outline. Then we had to do the roll-up-the-sleeves and figure out how the hell to do it all.”

She nearly managed a smile. “And we did. It’s going to be the ult of ults.”

“You’ve been testing it, playing it.”

“Oh hell yeah. The four of us, or whoever’s around and up, worked on it mostly after hours. At least at first. Lowdown on this one because it’s going to be big. That’s why we wanted to get Felicity to draw up some paperwork before we duped it for you guys.”

“Understood. What did Bart like to play best?”

“Oh, he mixes it up. But whatever he plays, he likes being the hero.

Who doesn’t? He likes scenarios where he’s fighting for a cause, or the girl, or his own soul. Best was that combo.”

“The program puts you into the scene, makes you work for it, right?”

“Wouldn’t be fun otherwise.”

“So was he good at the fight?”

“Better than the rest of us most of the time. Bart likes to watch vids on gun battles, sword fights, knife fights. He studies instructional discs, talks to soldiers and cops and all that. It’s important when you’re programming to know the moves, the strategies, so you can offer them to the player.”

She took another absent sip of the drink, stared out the glass again. “I guess most programmers aren’t all that physical, but Bart works at it. He likes to win-and he likes to play. He’s a hell of a gamer. Was,” she said, in a voice that started to shake. “He was. He was my best friend in the world. I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I don’t know what any of us are going to do.”

Eve took out a card, wrote down a couple of names and contacts. “Try one of these names. It can help to talk, and to have somebody listen.”

“Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think I will. Is it a problem if I go home now?”

“No. Cill, do you know the Sing family?”

“Oh sure, sure. The kids are seriously sweet.”

“Var mentioned you were having a service for Bart here tomorrow. They’d like to come. If you’d let them know.”

“Yeah, I will. They’re on my list already, but I’ll take care of it right off. I’ll do it from home. I just think I want to be home.”

“Okay. Where can I find Benny?”

“He was in his office when I went by a little while ago. Mostly the three of us are just sitting around trying to get from one minute to the next. He’s probably still there.”