Virtually Dead Read online

  Chas craned to look up and saw the underside of another building floating some way above the club. He took off and soared skywards, arms pressed to his side, until he was on a level with the building he had seen from below. In fact, it was just a large, grey box. There appeared to be no doors or windows in it. But Doobie and Jackin now showed as being just eight metres away. So, somehow, they were inside it. They must have teleported in.

  Chas recalled Twist’s first lesson in Second Life private investigation. He pointed at the nearest wall, zoomed in and then swivelled to the side so that he bypassed the wall altogether and suddenly had a view of the interior. Floor, walls, and ceiling appeared to be covered in thick-piled crimson plush. Lamps on the walls cast muted light around the room. Cushions were scattered across the floor, multicoloured, multisized. Among them pose balls offering any number of sexual activities, some odd-looking furniture, and some scarier-looking BDSM contraptions.

  Two figures lay naked among the pillows. Doobie was on her back, her legs apart, while Jackin lay between them, his pink bottom rising and falling to a steady, rhythmic beat. Chas clicked among the cushions for a closer view, confident that he was quite invisible to them, and watched with a certain amount of horrified fascination, and an odd, distant, feeling of jealousy.

  The dialogue of the sex partners was visible on his screen in open chat, and he was almost shocked by the mundane crudity of it.

  Jackin: Yeh. Yeh. Fucking you, baby. Fucking you.

  Doobie: Fuck me, Jack. Fuck me.

  Jackin: Bite my nipples, you bitch. Bite them!

  Doobie: Mmm. Biting your nipples, Jack. Sucking them hard.

  Chas selected Doobie from his Friends List and sent her an IM. Watching her closely, as if he might actually be able to discern some visual reaction.

  Chas: Hey, Doobie.

  After a moment…

  Doobie: I’m working right now, Chas.

  Chas: So I see.

  There was a long silence, during which Chas could almost feel Doobie absorbing the implications of that.

  Doobie: Where are you?

  Chas: Right outside.

  Doobie: Damned Peeping Tom!! Where’d you learn that trick?

  Chas: Actually, I’m trying very hard not to look. The sight of Mr. Thebox’s flaccid pink bottom flapping up and down is not exactly compulsive viewing.

  Doobie: No. Well, I’m not looking either. I’ve got my eyes closed. He thinks it’s ecstasy. What do you want, Chas?

  Chas: I’m looking for some SL advice, Doobie. It’s kind of important.

  Doobie: Well, that’s okay. Fire away. He doesn’t know we’re talking. And I’ll throw him the odd titbit to keep him excited. LOL. How can I help?

  Chas: How well do you know Twist?

  Doobie: Not at all, really. I saw him when he came to talk to Sable, the owner of the club, about the harassment problem. That’s about it.

  Chas: Well, I don’t want to say too much, but Twist and I are colleagues in RL. Crime scene investigators. I specialise in photography.

  Doobie: Oh, wow! Cool. Real-life detectives.

  Chas: Not detectives, Doobie. We just collect evidence. That’s all I’m going to tell you about who and where we are, but a few days ago we were at the home of a murder victim who turned out to have an account in Second Life.

  Doobie: Hey, Chas, this is getting exciting. Hang on a sec…

  Doobie: Yeh, baby, gimme more. Yeh, that’s it.

  Jackin Thebox’s bottom was still rising and falling between her legs.

  Doobie: Okay, how can I help?

  Chas: Well, somehow or other, all records of this guy’s account got wiped off the Linden Lab database, so we know nothing about who he was in SL.

  Doobie: Do you have a name?

  Chas: Maximillian Thrust.

  Doobie: Do you know if he was in any Groups?

  Chas: Yes, he was. I don’t know all of them.

  He thought back to the names Hardy had rattled off from the file.

  Chas: Black Creek Saloon. AAA Club. Virtual Realty.

  Doobie: Tell you what, then. I’ll do a little checking on these Groups, ask around a bit, see what I can find out for you. Oooh, this is exciting Chas!

  She paused.

  Doobie: I thought you said you weren’t detectives.

  Chas: We’re not, Doobs. Just…interested. You know?

  Jackin: I’m cumming, baby, I’m cumming.

  Doobie: Oh, God. Duty calls. I’ll let you know if I find anything. And leave now, please! No more peeping. I have to get rid of this guy, and I can’t go before he cums. So to speak. LOL.

  ***

  Back at Twist’s office, Chas saw that his partner in crime was still offline, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He wandered around, trying out different chairs and then the grand piano. He had never played a piano in his life, but suddenly he was a virtuoso.

  He was distracted by the sound of a train hooting in the distance, and he went to the window as a miniature steam train hauling half a dozen open carriages chugged past. There were two passengers, who looked very much like giant pink dildos. They had name tags above them. DJ Rob and Mistie Hax. So they were clearly avatars. Chas frowned in confusion as the train dipped down under water, before emerging a minute later to follow the tracks up into the sky.

  He turned around, then, and clicked to sit behind the desk in Twist’s chair, fish drifting past his head in the aquarium behind him. He had barely time to register the Third Life welcome page on the computer screen when a double ching alerted him to the arrival of an IM.

  Jamir: Chas. You are a private detective?

  Chas supposed that since his name was now on the Group list, people would see he was online and assume he was indeed a private detective, and that he knew what he was doing.

  Chas: Er…yes.

  Jamir: I need to talk to you. Can you send me a TP?

  Chas began to panic. He had no idea how to send a TP. He saw that Jamir’s full name was Jamir Jones and brought up his profile. Immediately he spotted an option to Offer Teleport. He clicked it and felt a certain amount of self-congratulatory satisfaction as he sent an invitation to Jamir to join him in the office on Jersey Island.

  Chas: The limousine is on its way.

  After several seconds, a flash of light cleared to reveal a grey shape that gradually rezzed into what looked like a small orange dragon on the floor in front of his desk. The tag above its head read, Pilot Jamir Jones. Chas looked at the creature in astonishment, and when he had regained some composure typed a greeting.

  Chas: Hi, Jamir. How may I help you?

  Jamir: We’ve been threatened, Chas, and I’d like you to do something about it.

  Chas: Who threatened you?

  Jamir: A griefer called Nevar Telling. He’s based on Sandbox Island.

  Chas cocked an eyebrow. Sandbox Island. That’s where Doobie had told him yesterday that she went griefer-hunting.

  Chas: Okay, why don’t you start from the beginning, Jamir. Gimme a rundown.

  Jamir: Ok. Well. We were flying a jet, Roger and me. Then…

  Chas: And Roger is?

  Jamir: Beside me.

  Chas was startled, dragging his eyes away from the dialogue box to see what appeared to be an identical creature on the floor beside Jamir, except that this one was blue. And was called Roger Showmun. Jamir, it seemed, had sent his friend a TP, and Chas hadn’t noticed his arrival. Chas had the sense that he had somehow slipped out of the real, or even virtual, world into some surreal netherworld beyond any horizon known to man.

  Chas: Hi, Rog.

  Jamir: We heard a big crash on the wing. Then a hippy-hair-looking man called Nevar Telling told us ridiculous things. Here is a Notecard I recorded of our conversation.

  Jamir passed Chas a Notecard, which opened up on his screen. It seemed to be a cut and pasted record of everything that had passed between the dragons and Nevar Telling. But made very little sense to him.

  Ch
as: What is it you’d like me to do, Jamir?

  Jamir: Well, if you look at the conversation, it was in caplock and was threatening me and Roger.

  Chas was beginning to feel a sense of despair.

  Chas: So he just landed on the wing of your jet and bombarded you with these threats.

  Roger: Yes, and shot one of our passengers.

  Chas: What are you guys anyway, dragons?

  Jamir: Geckos.

  Chas shook his head. He was having a conversation with giant geckos.

  Chas: And you were flying a jet?

  Jamir: Yes. Modern, luxury.

  Chas: Where to?

  Jamir: Nowhere. Just practising.

  Chas: You don’t often find geckos flying jets.

  Jamir: Hehe. No

  Chas: So, to sum up, this Nevar Telling character threatened you, and shot one of your passengers?

  Roger: Yes, me and Jamir was shocked.

  Chas: Well, you need to take whatever it is geckos take to calm down, and let me look into this.

  Ching-ching. Another IM came in. It was from Angel Catchpole.

  Angel: Hi, Chas. I’m just about to start a group session, if you want to join us.

  Chas: Two secs, Angel

  He turned to the geckos.

  Chas: Listen, guys, I have a pressing appointment right now. Why don’t you let me go and have a word with our friend, Nevar Telling, and I’ll get back to you?

  Jamir: Okay. Thanks, Chas. Here are our cards for when you need to get in touch.

  Offers of friendship arrived from each of the geckos, and he added them to his Friends List. A cash register sounded, and Chas was notified that Jamir had just paid him five hundred Lindens.

  Jamir: That’s on account, Chas. We’ll look forward to hearing from you.

  And with that, the two geckos were gone, leaving Chas looking at the five hundred Lindens clocked up in green figures at the top of his screen. He had just earned his first fee as a private investigator. He sent a brief account of his meeting to Twist in an IM that would be waiting for him when he logged in. Then he remembered Angel.

  Chas: Hi Angel. Sorry to keep you waiting. How do I get there?

  A window appeared almost immediately on his screen offering him a teleport to The Blackhouse, Poison Island.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Chas landed in full sunlight on a flat, empty stretch of sand that faded off to a blurred horizon as far as he could see in every direction. He immediately had a sense of something not quite right. Some primal instinct at work. The sand seemed divided by shallow waterways into square parcels. To the south he could see water, but no shoreline. Just a sharp division between the two. Tall, red For Sale obelisks spun in slow motion over several parcels, and as he stood, a large, black building began slowly to rez on the neighbouring plot.

  He started walking toward it. He could have flown, but he felt as if he had less control in the air than on the ground, and something was telling him that he needed to stay in control. He waded through the waterway that separated the two parcels, and emerged closer to what was clearly The Blackhouse.

  Gradually, as he got nearer, detail began to form. It seemed as if the building were constructed from some kind of black steel, welded together and studded with huge, round-headed rivets. Enormous double doors, three or four times Chas’ own height, stood wide, and as he approached them he saw that giant, demonic heads with short, curling horns had been carved into each of them, glowing red opals in the place of eyes. He hesitated and peered inside. It was dark, in stark contrast to the white, dusty glare of the midday sun on the outside. He took several cautious steps through the doors and stopped.

  There, in front of him, on a floor as black as the rest of the building, was a large pool of blood. Chas had seen blood left by murderers at many crime scenes over the years, but there was something chilling about this pool of it here in the middle of a virtual floor somewhere in the ether. He knew, of course, that it wasn’t real. That he had no cause to be afraid. And yet, without reason, he felt uncomfortable. He tapped into Open Chat.

  Chas: Hello?

  And waited. There was no reply. Why had Angel sent him a TP to this place? It made no sense. He took several steps further inside and heard a loud creak, the sound of metal grinding against metal. He turned quickly, in time to see the giant doors close behind him. They shut with a resounding clang. And his discomfort turned to something very much like fear.

  This was insane!

  He fumbled to open up his Inventory and the Landmark folder within it. There, he found all the LMs Doobie had given him. He clicked on one and selected Teleport.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried again. The same. He tried another. Still nothing. Something about this place was disabling his ability to teleport out. He was trapped. There were no windows here, and he wondered how he could see. There was a light source somewhere, but he was unable to locate it. The blood on the floor seemed to glow in the dark. Carefully, he worked his way around it, anxious not to step in it, the crime scene investigator in him fastidious about not disturbing evidence. And as he reached the far side, he saw that someone, or something, had not taken the same care as he. There were trails through the blood, and tracks led out of it into a corridor that curved away out of sight. But they weren’t footprints. They were clawmarks, as if some huge creature had feasted here amongst the blood and then dragged itself off down the corridor, leaving a bloody trail in its wake.

  Chas supposed he still had the option to quit the program, to simply log out. But that, he reasoned, would be foolish. What could possibly happen to him? He tried to rationalise the tension he felt tightening across his chest. He was simply projecting real-life fears on to Second Life fantasy. None of this was real. He forced himself to relax and take deep breaths. And he started off along the corridor, following the trail of clawmarks.

  As he rounded the curve, he saw light ahead, and moving further along, a row of small windows appeared, opening to the outside. Light fell into the building in long, misty yellow shafts. And the blood on the floor glowed even more vividly, caught in the beams. Chas forced himself on, keeping close to the wall, until finally the corridor opened into a vast, square arena, light pouring into it from tall windows on all sides. The bloody clawmarks led into the centre of the arena, where an even larger pool of blood reflected the light from the windows, steam rising from it into the gloom, as if the air were chill and the blood still fresh and warm.

  Angel: Welcome.

  Chas was momentarily startled, looking up to see a small group of people seated in a circle on a low stage at the far side of the arena.

  Angel: We’ve been watching you. Well done. You were faster than most.

  Chas walked toward the stage.

  Chas: I don’t understand.

  Angel: A little psychological test. Had you failed it, I would have deemed you unsuitable for therapy in Second Life.

  He saw her clearly now for the first time and knew that he would not have recognised her were it not for the tag above her head. She was dressed, head to foot, in deep purple, a long, flowing dress with a neckline cut almost to the naval. A silver-chained red pendant hung between ample breasts, a mirror of the earrings that hung like drops of blood from each lobe. Her face was the purest white, crimson lips cut like a deep slash across its lower half. Her eyes were the coldest, palest blue. Husky eyes. Black hair streaked with silver hung down below her waist, and in the crook of a very pale arm, she held open a large oxblood leather-bound tome, with the word Spellbook tooled into its front cover.

  Chas: Well, what was the test?

  Angel: The virtual world, Chas, affects different people in different ways. In spite of knowing that what we experience here is not real, some people are very deeply affected by it. They transfer real fears and feelings from the real world to the virtual, where the very nature of the experience is rooted deeply in our imaginations, tapping into the hidden depths of our psyche. Everything can seem more profo
und. More intense.

  And Chas remembered Doobie’s words from yesterday. Human emotions—love, hate, jealousy, envy—are like the light that burns twice as bright but only half as long.

  Angel: And for some people that intensity can be dangerous. They become overtaken by their own emotions, in a way that neither they, nor I, can control. The experience is damaging. We require a certain inner strength to survive this second life intact.

  Chas: So some people fail your test?

  Angel: Oh, yes. Quite a number.

  Chas: And how do they fail?

  Angel: Some of them simply never cross the threshold. The very act of moving from bright sunlight into the dark unknown is too much for them. Then there are those who retreat at the sight of blood. Blood is symbolic, you see. Of life, and death. Of our own mortality. So many people go through life failing to come to terms with the fact that, in the end, they will die. Religion has, since the dawn of time, facilitated mankind’s need for denial, faith feeding a belief that, after all, death can be defeated. It is the ultimate example of man’s great capacity for self-deception. Then there are those who simply panic when the doors close. Some think to try to teleport out, some don’t. But the brain freezes, paralysed by an irrational fear. After all, what harm can really become them here? All they have to do is log out. I’m sure that thought passed through your mind.

  Chas: Yes.

  He did not like feeling that he was so predictable, that every emotion he had gone through had been carefully choreographed, his responses to them falling into preordained categories. A psychologist’s boxes ticked and checked.

  Angel: But still you proceeded to the arena. Which demonstrates a depth of character that tells me you are mentally strong enough to join our little group.