Halting State

JACK: The Anti-nutcase EULA

When you were young, you had a recurring dream about being in a car crash. You’d be behind the wheel, peering over the dash—you were too short to reach the pedals, too young to know how to drive—and the car would be careening along the road, weaving from side to side, engine roaring and moaning in mounting chaos, and you’d see on-coming lights rushing towards you in a symphony of bent metal and pain—then you’d startle awake, shivering with fright between the sweat-slick sheets.

This is nothing like that dream. For one thing, the dream didn’t smell of burning plastic and gunpowder, or explode out of the floor and punch you in the face like a demented yellow mushroom while turgid blinds snap down across the windows with a sound like gunfire. For another thing, you were always on your own, not shit-scared about being trapped inside a crumple zone with a friend being thrown around like a rag doll.

The taxi isn’t entirely stupid. Freed from the homicidal wishes of the hijacker, it sensibly determined that its new controller was intoxicated or otherwise incapacitated. Even as it crossed the central reservation it was braking hard enough to leave a thick black slug-trail of rubber on the tarmac, triggering air-bags—inside and out—and yammering a warning at the on-coming autodrive convoy. By the time the first collision hammered home, it was already down to twenty kilometres per hour, and the unfortunate impactor was in the middle of an emergency stop from sixty. The sound of tearing, crumpling metal seems to go on forever, a background string symphony almost drowned out by the percussive rattle of the air-bags and the screaming in your head. In reality, it’s all over in a couple of seconds.

The stench of nitrate explosives is overpowering, and the air is full of dust. The air-bags, their job now done, begin to detumesce. You fumble with your seat belt, hunting around for the release button, then try to reach around the bulging central pillar of yellow plastic. “Elaine?” You can barely hear the sound of your own voice. “Are you okay—”

You edge the pillar out of the way and see Elaine’s legs and torso embedded in a mass of plastic bubbles. (The driver’s cab is a solid wall of yellow balloons). You stare in horror at the end of your world, half-certain that she’s been chopped in half. But there’s no blood, and her legs are twitching. “Help me, can’t breathe—” You almost faint with relief as the yellow walls part, and Elaine falls into your arms. “Ow, shit!” She takes a deep breath and tenses. “Fuck, ow, shit, I think I bruised my ribs.” You gape with slack-jawed relief as the yammering lizard in your hindbrain slowly realizes that the nightmare is over.

Her voice sounds wrong. The multiple air bags in the passenger compartment are slowly going down, and there’s a smear of blood on the side of one of them. Smart bags; or maybe she was just caught between them and immobilized like a fly in amber—once upon a time she’d be dead, through the windscreen and torn apart on the unforgiving road, or neck broken by a dumb stupid boxing-glove full of hot gasses erupting in her face, but these bags know where you are and fire in synchrony to bounce the airborne passenger into a safe space and immobilize them.

You feel weak, your guts mushy and your head spinning. The mummy lobe is yelling about Consequences, not to mention dangerous driving and calling the emergency services, but for once it’s outvoted: You’re just glad she’s alive and unmutilated and you’re here to catch her.

“Let’s get out of here,” you hear a different you say firmly: The risk of someone else driving into the wreck isn’t that great, but you’re not in a fate-tempting mode just now. “You really worried me…”

“Me, too. Let’s move.” She takes a deep breath. “My phone—”

“Allow me.” You fumble with the multitool—somehow you kept track of it—and puncture some of the air-bags, and she twists round and grubs around on the floor for a moment while you fight your way to the near-side door. The door is jammed solid and crumpled inwards, the window a spider-web of cracks: But there’s an emergency handle, and when you pull it there’s a rattling bump from the door, and it falls away from your hand, hinges severed. You broke it! yammers the mummy lobe. Now you’ll pay!

“Got it,” she says, and a moment later you’re both standing in a cold grey shower. “Hey, the other cars—”

Your stomach knots up, and you swallow back acid, holding your breath, and look past the taxi. There’s a shiny new Range Rover with its bonnet pushed up: The driver’s door is open, but the air-bags are still in place. The traffic has slowed. For a moment you’re back in the nightmare again. “Call your friends,” you tell her, a betraying wobble in your voice, “then call the police.” Your feet feel like lead weights while your head is too light, and they’re held together by knees made of jelly, but you find yourself walking towards the SUV, terrified of what you’ll find.

The backdoor of the Range Rover opens and a pair of feet appear. They’re too small, you tell yourself. They fumble around for the running-board then step down onto the road, and you suddenly realize they belong to a kid—a girl? In school uniform. Blonde, about ten years old, very serious-looking. She looks around, puzzled, and you wave. “Over here! On the pavement.”

Behind you, Elaine is on the phone, shoulders hunched. The girl walks towards you slowly, head swivelling between the Range Rover and the wreck of the taxi. “Mummy’s going to be very unhappy,” she says, her voice dripping with innocent menace. Speculatively: “Is the driver in there? Did you make it crash? Is he dead?”

“No!” You glance at Elaine. “We were passengers, it’s on remote drive. Something went wrong, my friend’s calling the police now. Are you alright? Is there anyone else in your car?”

“Just me. Mummy sent the car because I had to come home early.” You realize your heart is hammering and you feel faint. “Your hand is bleeding. Did you cut it?”

“I must have.” You sit down hard. The world is spinning. A van moves slowly past the taxi, pulls in just down the road. You hear yourself laughing, distantly: It takes you a few seconds to realize it’s your phone ringing.

What happens next is this:

The first responder to arrive is a police officer. He parks up the road with his lights flickering red highlights across the broken glass and water, gets out, and immediately calls dispatch for an ambulance crew. “Dinna move,” he advises you gingerly, then Elaine is talking to him animatedly, saying something. A few minutes later the ambulance arrives, and two nice people in green with name tags reading SUSAN and ANDRE ask you some pointed questions.

“I’m Jack,” you say, tiredly. “I know who I am, and I know what year it is. I’m just a bit dizzy.” And cold, and shivery. At which point they quite unnecessarily strap a board to your back and shoulders and bring out the stretcher and lift you into a big white box full of inscrutable medical gadgets. During this process your phone rings again, so you switch it to silent.

An indeterminate time later SUSAN comes and sits on the jump-seat beside you while the ambulance starts to go places. “Where are we going?” you ask.

“We’re just taking you to the local A#amp#E,” SUSAN explains pleasantly, “just so they can look you over. Don’t worry about your friend, she’s sitting up front.”

There follows an uncomfortable interlude with wah-wah noises and many jaw-cracking jolts across homicidally inclined speed bumps: then a brisk insertion into a bay at the Accident and Emergency unit, where a nurse efficiently plugs you into a multifunction monitor and a couple of triage people conclude that you’re just suffering from mild shock rather than, say, a broken neck. Whereupon they leave you alone.

An indeterminate time later—just long enough for you to begin getting grumpy and thinking but what if I really was ill?—the curtain twitches. You try to sit up, just as Elaine sneaks inside. “How are you feeling?” she asks.

“Not wonderful, but better than I was. Bored.” You try to shrug, but it’s difficult when you’re lying down. You don’t want her to notice how happy you are to see her, so you try to keep her talking. “Did the police make any trouble?”

She pulls a face. “No. Turns out the taxi was breaking the speed limit: When I said we thought it was out of control, they were all tea and sympathy. Turns out it’s the third one this week.”

“The third—”

“Yeah.” She looks at you thoughtfully. “Stinks, doesn’t it? I think we ought to head back to Hayek, find Sergeant Smith, and sing like a Welsh mining choir.”

Stinks, doesn’t it? That’s one way of putting it: A thousand an hour is good money, but it’s not good enough to cover being stabbed, crushed, drowned, or otherwise bent, spindled, and mutilated in the line of duty. Especially not in a goddamn live-action role-playing game. You find yourself nodding. “Yeah. And the call from SPOOKS. In the taxi. I didn’t know you played SPOOKS.”

“Any particular reason?” She narrows her eyes, searching for contempt.

“I think it’s an interesting coincidence.” You pause. “I used to play SPOOKS quite a lot. But it never told me I was being kidnapped before.” There, it’s out in the open.

“Yes. By the Guoanbu.”

There it is again: You try to pull your scattered thoughts together. “When he tried to stab me. No, I mean before then. He wanted asylum, Elaine. What kind of game did he think we’re playing?”

“SPOOKS.” She’s watching you, as if she expects you to laugh at her. “Well, that figures.” A thought strikes you. “Maybe he was just nuts. You get that sometimes, a schizophrenic who mistakes their LARP controller for god or ‘M’ or something. One of the things we were working on for STEAMING was a sign-up wizard that does some personality profiling to weed them out.”

“But”—she bites her lip—“I don’t think you’re nuts. Do you think I’m nuts?” She asks.

No. “How long have you been playing it?” you ask.

“’Bout three years. Why?”

“Just thinking.” You’ve been into the game for even longer, LupuSoft expected you to play it back when they were in the conceptual development stage for STEAMING…“My account lapsed about a year ago, I was too busy working on a, a competitor. Only—hey, you’re not supposed to use your phone in here.”

“Bullshit, they just say that to force you to pay through the nose for the PatientLine services.” She dials a number. “Come on…hello? Yes?”

It’s really weird watching her face as she slips into the player’s headspace. The skin around her eyes goes slightly slack, her posture changes: Like a cat that’s spotted a bird, she’s all focus. It’s even weirder when you stop to think about it: because you know all the statistics, nearly 45 per cent of gamers are women, even though if you look at the biz from outside it seems to be focussed on an attention-deficient twelve-year-old male with a breast fixation and a sugar high. Something you read about SPOOKS comes back to you, that it was deliberately designed to punch female escapist buttons. Back in prehistory, when there were two Germanys, the East German spies used to recruit lonely female secretarial and administrative staff on the other side, using sex…but also sometimes just the promise of a life less ordinary. People will pay through the nose for excitement: Is it any surprise that they’ll take it if you’re giving it away for free?

“Yes, here he is.” She holds her phone out towards you. “It’s Spooks Control.”

“Yeah?” You take the phone. “Who is—”

“Hello, Jack. Your authenticator is Gold Koala Dictionary.” Which is flaky because even after a year you remember the three random words: They should have dumped you off their player database months ago. The voice is faintly familiar.

“I don’t play SPOOKS anymore,” you say automatically.

“SPOOKS hasn’t finished playing you, Agent Reed,” Control replies snippily. “Constable Patel will be along to see you in a minute or two. He’ll give you each a form to sign, then you’ll discharge yourself from hospital and he will give you both a ride back to Edinburgh. You have a meeting at four o’clock sharp.”

“What if I don’t want to go to any meeting?” You know it’s futile as the words leave your mouth, but that’s not the point. “I’m not in your bloody LARP anymore! I unsubscribed!”

“Agent Reed, this is no longer a game. If you don’t play along, we’ll have to have you taken into custody for your own protection. The recent attempt to abduct you was not an isolated incident: We’ve been informed that your niece Elsie went missing two hours ago. The local police assigned a Family Liaison Officer to the case after your reported threats and were preparing to move them to a safe house but—”

The voice continues to make buzzing noises, but you’re not paying attention: You’re staring at the back of your own head, wondering when you stepped through the looking-glass. Nothing makes sense, but looming at the edge of your universe is a thing of horror. The games have imploded into reality. You suppose you ought to be relieved that they told you about it, so that it’s not a figment of your imagination…but it feels like your world is ending. As indeed it should have, all those years ago.

“Jack?” It’s Elaine. She looks like she’s seen a ghost. “Jack? Talk to me!”

You hold the phone out. She takes it. “Yes?” she asks. Then she listens for a minute, nodding, occasionally saying “yes” quietly. “He looks shocked,” she says. “Put yourself in his shoes, for a—yes, I will. Yes.”

Eventually she hangs up. “Jack?”

“What?”

“Get up.” She looks like her dog’s just been put down. “We’ve got to go.”

You bundle up the thin hospital sheet and swing your legs over the side of the bed. “Why?”

“They told me about your niece. That’s awful…”

“Yes,” you say, unsure what else is expected of you. “But there’s nothing I can do about that right now.”

“They told me we’ve been drafted,” she adds, stiffly, looking at you with an air of uncertainty, as if she’s half-expecting your head to start spinning round, or something. Maybe you ought to be getting emotional, but it’s just one weird blow on top of another today. People are trying to kill you, repeatedly: All you really feel is a numb sense of dread.

“I figured that much. As well?”

“It’s in the end-user license agreement to SPOOKS. The usual, we let them do background checks to determine credit worthiness and ‘eligibility to participate,’ it says. The anti-nutcase clause. And we signed to let them vary the T’s and C’s.”

“So?”

“The anti-nutcase clause is effectively a privacy waiver for positive vetting. And the T’s and C’s—”

“Official Secrets Act, as a click-through?”

“Something like that.” She shifts from one foot to the other restlessly, as if thinking about running away. “About your niece, Elsie is it? Are you close to her? Spooks Control says it was the other side.”

The other side. A nice turn of phrase, but who exactly are the other side? And what does it mean? “They would say that, wouldn’t they.” You suppose you ought to feel angry, but you’re actually just filled with a monstrous sense of surprise. “I’m…not that close, really.” It’s just my niece. If it wasn’t you at the centre of it all, if it was some other poor bastard on the receiving end of this sinister post-modern joke, you’d be laughing hysterically. As it is, maybe crying is an appropriate response. “Let’s—”

The curtain jerks open, admitting a police officer, goggle-eyed and cammed up like a paratrooper wearing a spider-eyed mask. “Mr. Reed and Ms. Barnaby? I’m to take you across to Edinburgh. If you’d like to put your chop here…”

He hands you a clipboard and a pen, old-fashioned ink and a sticky panel for you to thumbprint at the bottom of the page of small print with the Saltire and red lion rampant, and as you sign your name to the revised EULA, you can feel the waters closing in over your head.