Sim

SIM

He snapped awake. Sensory static flickered across his vision. He stared
up at soft lighting and sterile walls and frowned at the unfamiliar
surroundings. Confusion rolled over him. His mind reached out through
layers of synthetic neural circuitry to conjure up the command
suite.
A moment of mental fumbling then panic. The device wasn't there.
When active the command-suite was superimposed across his natural
vision, generated by the pea-sized implant of raw chip memory wet-wired
inside his skull. Such implants were commonly called WAM: Wet Access
Memory. His mind had gone to it on instinct, a craving for up to date
awareness of the situation. What situation? The world; business, money,
people, who wanted who for a particular job, who needed who, where were
the premiums for the head hunters, the top-slicing of multi-corporate
project funds to pay off the man who helped put it all together.
Ulrich Drake, take a bow.
Already this year he had closed the deal on the Heredotus Project,
securing 35 million dollars of Euro Federation money for the project
members and 4 million dollars for his own deposit account.
The confusion of where he was washed away as the memories swept into
his mind. He had been in surgery. The confusion was replaced by an
unexplainable tension. Residual effects of the anaesthetic left him
groggy and detached from a clear line of thought.
He tried to lift his hands and was relieved to see them; he brought
them close to his face, turning them slowly. Short, powerful fingers,
wide palms, tanned flesh, fine golden hairs. He clenched them until his
knuckles turned white, then relaxed and rested them on the soft linen
of the clinic bed.
"Two days under the knife&;#8230;Goddamn! You better make sure this
thing is worth it." He recalled his conversation with Jack Warner,
Director of R &; D at the Zendori Institute.
Thinking back to it, Jack had never really given much of an
affirmation, remaining equivocal behind his resilient straight face
with tightly pressed lips and emotionless grey eyes. It was Jack's
typical tactic, forcing him to acknowledge that he was accepting the
deal because he wanted to. Ulrich knew that it was his own personal
motivation that had brought him to this point. Jack did not try to win
his trust with medical platitudes about the safety of the new
technology.
Then again, Jack had never gone into describing the risks. And Ulrich
had never asked him to.

"You made a remarkable recovery, Ulrich." Jack Warner enthused,
standing beside his table as Ulrich sampled breakfast within the
enclosed pool-bay of the Institute. It was one of the rare moments Jack
allowed an emotion to surface to the lined mask of his face: Ulrich
guessed there was some genuine surprise in the speed of his
recovery.
Ulrich sipped a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. He
nodded, allowed a brief smile and a self-gratifying shrug at the
proclaimed robustness of his health.
"You should be able to leave this afternoon, if you wish."
Ulrich raised the orange juice in the gesture of a toast; "Enjoying
the fabulous accommodation you provide here, Jack, I might be inclined
to stay another few nights."
A grim smile spread across the Director of R &; D's lips. Then he
said, "Excellent, I'm sure we have a few trials we could run on you.
The labs are running low on rats."
Ulrich chuckled, albeit not without a slight waver of uneasiness. "Can
I have the check please."
Without a beat for the humour to settle, Jack said, "Are you heading
back to Brussels straight away, or staying in London for a
while?"
Ulrich winced in a parody of pain, "Brussels, God no. I'm going back
to my den in Bristol, spend some quality time, alone. Play with this
new toy you've given me." He tapped his skull.
A blank look passed across Jack's face, as if he were entering a
moment of deep thought. A moment later he said: "Bristol, eh? I hear
it's a nice place. I should come and visit you sometime."
"That would be superb, Jack! It's a fabulous city. It can offer
everything London has without the twenty million sweating burger
guzzling irritations."
It took a moment for Jack to understand his reference, then emitted a
short guffaw. "Indeed."
"I know I don't need to say this, as I'm sure you're already aware of
the fact, but I am slightly concerned about my wet-memory."
"Sorry Ulrich, I should have informed you. I had it taken off-line for
a while, just whilst the new nervous tissue we inserted around the sim
implant anchors itself properly."
Ulrich smiled, his worries put at ease. "How long before you can give
me access?"
"A few hours. You will have it back by tonight."

He drove a chrome finished AC Cobra, a replica of the classic sixties
convertible sports car. The powerplant was a custom-rigged 5 litre
Marcos V8, which would have been capable of producing 320bhp if using
petroleum fuel. The engine had been eloquently converted from raw
fossil fuel to hydrogen energy cells, and some intelligent sound
engineering brought back the right noise characteristics for the
powerful drive.
Heading West out of London onto the elevated premium-toll road, he
settled into a comfortable eighty miles per hour cruise toward Bristol.
Fiery red and orange light lanced off the gleaming bonnet, and he
grinned so widely and tight lipped his cheeks wrinkled up beneath the
lines of his eyes.
As a forty-year-old some people would suggest he should not be driving
such a car, but Ulrich considered it less of a claim of wealth and
success, as a way of expressing his personal satisfaction with his
life.
Lorna, the woman he was driving to see, certainly enjoyed being driven
out to their countryside jaunts within it. He had told Jack his plan
was to spend time alone in Bristol, which he would, after he had spent
a couple of nights with Lorna.
Lorna was twenty-four, tall, brunette and lithe bodied; a classically
trained ballet dancer now making a small fortune running personal
fitness centres along the London-Bristol corridor. She was also
married, and their eight-month sex-affair had survived for the sole
reason neither of them talked to anybody about the other. Ulrich had
never married and never been concerned with raising a family. He had
never used the services of a prostitute and never paid for sex, but a
number people, usually ex-lovers had claimed he treated people like
whores. Old business partners occasionally said the same thing.
Ulrich glanced at his eyes in the slim rear-view mirror. Pale green,
verging on grey, their delicate colour drawn out like a rare pigment by
the deep tan of his flesh. He took in their intelligent shape and, what
he saw as, sexual intensity and mentally stroked his ego for a few
moments. Part of his brain held up questions of awe about the
technology that now pervaded his body. He recalled his twenties and the
almost shocking pace of change brought into society by the advancement
of cybernetic implants and the 'clean' surgery that made it possible.
The questions were not real queries, they were prompts allowing him to
review his own embracing of the technology. One question that did
linger, and had for many months, was the growing feeling of pride in
his flesh and blood. He found himself holding up his sense of humanity
within a light of organic purity. His eyes, for example, were untouched
unlike some of the new breed of cybernetic advocates who had gone for
total replacement of their eyes with implants that gave them perfect
sight, and all the advantages of the digital medium. His eyes were
human, and thinking about it now, he wondered what happened on the
subconscious level when you looked into a pair of synthetic eyes, when
eyes were the windows of the soul?

Lorna had rented an apartment in Clifton, an expensive area of Bristol,
which she used to facilitate a life separate from her husband's
interest. She was married to a man who was climbing the corporate ranks
of a large investment firm. Ulrich knew his name because Lorna had
mentioned it once but that was all and he had never asked to know more;
he viewed her husband as insignificant to the flow of his life.
Her apartment was on the fourth floor of an impressive Georgian house.
A small garden had been flattened with tarmac to give the residents
parking space. He squeezed the Cobra into the tiny slot between two
matching Audi's then walked briskly into the entrance foyer. Marble
floor, wrought iron handrail curving round the stone staircase,
landings adorned with occasional rugs and highly decorative plants. It
was the scent of those plants that created the familiar smell of the
place. The smell invoked sordid memories and heightened his
anticipation of seeing Lorna.
He used the spare key-card she had given him and slipped quietly into
the front hall of the apartment. A slatted wood staircase to his left
rose up to an attic level, which Lorna had converted into an open plan
play-room, fitness room and sex haven. Softly closing the front door
behind him he stood there a moment, head angled upwards as he watched
the enticing flicker of candlelight up there. Music played, ambient and
electronic, the type of sound she was into. He already had an erection
from the idea of what game she had set-up to tease him with.
The sound of her giggle came down from above and Ulrich grinned
broadly.
Then he heard a soft click to his right, a short distance away and his
brain rapidly went through the process of thinking it sounded like a
light-switch being flicked, which meant there was somebody else in the
apartment-
A tiny impact struck his neck. Like an insect sting. Ulrich tried to
turn but he was already sinking into darkness.

He found himself on the settee. There were no lights on. A solid shaft
of moonlight sloped into the room through a tall window. Trees crowded
the space outside the window and for an irrational moment he thought he
saw them lean back, as if they had been straining forward watching
him.
He grunted as he struggled to lift himself up into a sitting position.
Fragments of memory began swirl through the chambers of his thoughts
and he recalled the sharp sting in his neck. Frowning, he reached his
hand behind his head and felt for any bump or sign of injury on his
neck. He could feel nothing, except&;#8230;..his fingers felt as if
they were coated in something dry and slightly sticky. Bringing his
hand in front of him, looking at it, he saw it was covered in some kind
of dark stain. His mouth parted slightly, a sound of confusion drifting
from his lips. Glancing down he saw that his shirt was covered in the
same substance, the white cotton fabric heavy with a residual dampness.
In fact, so was the settee.
He stood up quickly, his heart beating to an ascending pace as his
eyes noted the over turned coffee table, the magazine-readers and
eclectic trinkets scattered across the pale carpet. There was a trail
of shoe prints across the carpet, stains made from the dark substance.
The rest of the large room appeared intact. He walked quickly to the
light switch and brought up the lights. What he saw made him freeze in
fear, disgust and horror.
Blood.
It was blood on his hands, on his shirt and the settee. The trail of
shoe prints was a trail of gore coming from the hall.
Stammering, he called out, "Lorna."
His throat felt dry and tight; his mouth was void of spittle and it was
hard to swallow. Sweat rose rapidly across his skin.
"Lorna." He shouted, rooted to the wall with his hand on the light
switch.
When no answer came he began trembling, his imagination racing ahead to
create a series of gruesome scenarios to explain the trail of
blood.
Jesus, what is this? What is going on here?
His eyes scoured the room one more time, and were irresistibly drawn to
the bloody shoe prints. His gaze followed them from the sofa, past him
and through the door. Then an awful idea struck him and he lifted up
his shoe to look at the soul. It was caked in dry and congealing blood,
there was a piece of something that looked like gristle caught within a
deep groove of the heel. His mouth dropped open and he let out a
terrified sound and frantically dragged his foot across the carpet,
hoping to dislodge the sickening article.
"Jesus." He was breathing heavily.
Shaking, he turned and followed the bloody trail out into the hall. The
shoe prints were in one direction, coming from the attic stairs
down.
Drawn now, unable to lock his brain onto the notion to run from the
apartment, he slowly walked across the hall and climbed the
stairs.
The attic was in semi-darkness, illuminated by three shafts of
moonlight from overhead window-hatches. The air was heavy with the
smell of blood and burnt meat. The figure of a person was perfectly
silhouetted within one shaft of moonlight, strung up within a
sex-harness like an awful black cardboard cut-out shape. Could such an
outline really belong to a human being? The figure was suspended by
ceiling mounted harness straps in mid-air, in an all-fours position,
with a strap coming down to a head-rig set so tight it had the head
pulled sharply back. The head angle burned itself into Ulrich's brain
as his eyes picked up the essential details. The monstrous gap where
the front of the figure's throat should have been so that it seemed the
head was held onto the body by the bondage gear alone. There was the
outline of breasts, and long hair, and the slim gently muscled physique
he had spent days longing for.
He reached for the light switch, his hand shaking uncontrollably and
brought the full nightmare into sight.
His knees buckled and he dropped to the floor, retching and
hyperventilating at the same moment. It was a struggle to stop himself
from choking. He blinked rapidly as his face contorted, sweat pouring
off his brow. The noise of his vomiting, wailing, gasping and frantic
breathing swamped his ears and had the affect of compressing his
awareness into a tight bubble within himself for a while. There was
almost a perverse sense of peace, where he could hide from the horror
waiting for him until he recovered.
His breathing returned to normal, leaving him kneeling on the floor
with his senses resurfacing. He had his head bowed and his eyes fixed
on a clean patch of carpet in from of him. The periphery of his vision
pulsed with the hyper-tense blood pressure and his brain's manipulation
of the grotesque image dangling above his line of sight.
Knowing he had to look, Ulrich breathed in deeply, exhaled a calming
breath then raised his eyes to Lorna. He shuddered, his neck and jaw
muscles contracting as he surveyed the horrific damage done to her.
Arterial blood sprays covered the walls and ceiling around where she
hung. Pools of blood covered the carpet below her. There was so much
blood on the carpet the stains were still wet with dark rings of
congealing crust around the edges. Lorna's throat had been completely
hacked away, leaving a thick sliver of muscle and flesh connecting her
head to her body. The head was yanked so far back he could almost see
into her chest cavity through the ruined mess. Her head was clamped in
mask made of strips of leather; her face had been savagely attacked,
with a knife or some sharp instrument, the soft flesh slashed and cut
deeply multiple times, her eyes had been gouged out and the empty
sockets cut around the edges. Possibly the worst damage were the thick
lips of flesh where her stomach had been sliced open in one deep cut.
The lips of the long wound bulged outward with the weight of intestines
ready to fall out of her, although some of the long loops of vivid
coloured innards had already slipped out, dangling like thick chords of
pink, yellow, purple and red tissue.
He doubled-over as his stomach contracted violently and he retched,
bringing up nothing but gastric acid and saliva.
Staggering to his feet, he turned away and used his arm to support
himself against the wall by the head of the staircase.
"God, oh- oh, oh God!." He gasped.
The implication of the situation was rapidly dawning on him. A
butchered woman, his bloody shoe prints and 'convenient' black out
during the time of the murder. The police would see it as open and
shut.
He calmed his breathing and fixed his gaze on a gold-painted carving of
an angel fixed to the wall around an arrangement of coloured
glass.
Two choices.
One: run and damage the slim chance of proving his innocence.
Two: stay and risk spending the rest of his life in jail.
Think.
Starting point: he had been framed.
Why?
A million reasons flooded onto the stage of his mind, but seeing them
there, none of them grabbed him as a motive for such a brutal
murder.
He brought the command-suite for his WAM into the periphery of his
vision, intending to browse through the stored list of contacts to who
he felt he could call.
His intention was diverted, however, when he saw the new icon sitting
there within the suite. It was the icon for the sim-stim recording
wet-ware he had just had implanted; the icon was showing a new
recording waiting to be purged.
A new recording.
Ulrich manipulated the sim's software and began to playback the
footage. As with any sim the recording overrode the viewer's personal
sensorium and flooded it with the recorded experience of the host: the
person who made the recording.
The sim showed Lorna giggling and making lewd faces as she was fastened
into the sex harness.
Ulrich did not resist as his legs gave way again, he willingly allowed
himself to fall against the wall and slump to the floor. The sim
appeared to fill in the blank memory created by his blackout.
He watched enough to confirm what he dreaded. A knife appeared in the
host's hand (his hand?), the host prodded it against the mask whilst
Lorna revelled in what she believed to be play-torment, until the host
(he?) jabbed the point of the blade into her eyeball and her screams
and frantic struggles swamped the recording.
He stopped the playback and his vision returned to the attic room as it
was now.
The sim was of Lorna's murder.
The sim was of him murdering Lorna?
It did not make sense. He had done bad things but never murder. The
black out did not make sense.
He wiped silent tears from his face, trying to settle his thoughts into
some order.
"What the hell am I going to do?" He hissed to himself.
Think-think-think. He realised the tears had smeared the blood on his
hands across his skin.
His mind locked onto the memory of the sting-sensation on his neck just
before he blacked-out.
Could he have been drugged?
Was it actually his recording? Was he actually the host?
Because a sim was recorded from the host's point-of-view, there was no
way to see whom the host was unless that person caught their reflection
in a mirror. Ulrich glanced around the attic space to see if there were
any mirrors that might have caught the reflection. There were
none.
He recalled Lorna had never minded seeing herself on video but had
always claimed a mirror tempted vanity and nostalgia for one's
youth.
He recalled many things Lorna had said.
Time flowed as he lay slumped against the wall, caught in a maelstrom
of aching memories and a flood of tears.

Ulrich sat at the bottom of the attic stairs, his forearms resting
across his thighs as he held his mo-com to his ear and rang Jack
Warner.
Jack answered on the second ring.
At first, Ulrich found his ability to speak reduced to a dry wheeze, he
swallowed hard several times.
"Ulrich?" Jack asked with professional concern, having obviously seen
the caller's identity before answering.
"Jack." Ulrich found his voice and the emotions surged forward before
he could try to restrain them; "Oh God Jack, what have I done?
Jack&;#8230;. Jack, I'm a murderer, Jack, I've killed a woman, I've
killed Lorna. I've - " A choking sob, "She was so beautiful. I would
never of hurt her!" Another sob, followed by a sucking in of air and a
tight wail, "Jesus this is insane, Jack. I can't&;#8230;.I can't
remember it though&;#8230;.. please Jack, tell me I didn't do
it"
"Ulrich, Ulrich&;#8230;..calm down! Please Ulrich, try to calm
down." Jack's restful voice shifted up into a degree of anxiety.
"You had to see her though&;#8230;. She was beautiful&;#8230; it,
it, it's awful, it's so bloody awful! What have I done?" A whimpering
wail.
"Ulrich, what woman, who are you talking about? Where are you now? Are
you in Bristol?"
Ulrich sobbed into the mo-com, his body shuddering with each wave of
raw emotion.
"Are you in Bristol?" Jack's voice dropped back into a tone of
authority.
Ulrich gasped, sucked in a deep breath and fought to hold back his
tears. Sighing, he answered "Yes."
"The woman, who is the woman?"
"Her name is Lorna. I haven't told anybody about her."
"Goddamn it, Ulrich."
He began sobbing uncontrollably, wailing like an injured animal.
"Ulrich, please remain calm."
"I'm trying Jack," he squealed through his sobbing, "but you're not the
one sitting here covered in her blood."
"Yes, quite."
Ulrich sniffed back mucus from his nose, wiped the strands of saliva
from his chin; he began to bring his breathing back to normal.
"And you are sure she is dead?"
Ulrich laughed, a hideous hollow sound that made his chest ache. He
described the wounds to him and told him about the sim-stim
recording.
Jack went quiet for a long moment, "And you have no memory of doing
this?"
Ulrich shivered, "No&;#8230;. no I don't&;#8230;. God, please
don't tell me I did this."
"There's a quick check we can do." Jack explained to Ulrich how to
check the software version used to make the recording. Ulrich read off
the number that appeared within his vision.
Jack's voice sounded low, "It is your recording Ulrich. You made
it."
Ulrich heard the words and experienced moment of surreal lucidity, he
felt nothing, no horror, no fear, just clear thoughts in his
mind.
"Ulrich, where are you now?"
"At her house."
"I want you to leave immediately. Ulrich, do you hear me? I want you to
get out of there, now. I don't want you to touch or try to tidy
anything. Do you understand?"
"I think I've been framed." Ulrich said.
"Ulrich, don't think. Don't do anything but leave. Get out of there
now. Get yourself back to Zendori."
"Don't go anywhere, Jack, I might need to call you again."
"Ulri-
Ulrich cut the connection.
The silence of Lorna's apartment rushed back to greet him, filling his
ears, trapping him inside his own skull with his thoughts amplified to
the point where they hurt.
Murderer.
"No!" He shouted, thumping a fist into the staircase.
Think.
A bad reaction to the surgery. Cyber-psychosis. Lorna's husband. These
were only a sample of the possibilities swirling through his
mind.
The sting in the back of his neck.
Drugged?
Could somebody have drugged him and then up-loaded the sim of Lorna's
murder into his WAM? It was possible, although he had no idea of the
motive why. Zendori had only just developed the software used to make
the recording so the number of people with access to it would be small.
Jack would know who had access.
He dialled Jack number and was diverted through to the man's
voice-mail.
"Damn it, Jack."
He dialled again. Again, he was diverted to the voice-mail.
An uneasy feeling settled over his shoulders. Who was Jack talking to?
He began to suffer serious doubts. Paranoia locked its jaws around his
mind. How far could he trust Jack? Ulrich didn't leave a message.
Instead he switched off his mo-com and grimaced as he realised the
police simply had to run a check on his mo-com's transmission
co-ordinates to know he had been there during the time of the murder.
That was if he decided to make a run for it.
He slumped back on the staircase and clamped his hands across his
eyes, his mind was in a riot.
Jack was his friend, they had known each other for fifteen years; but
the feeling of uncertainty would not go away.
Call the police and get it over with.
Ulrich thought about it and the more he thought about it the more the
idea terrified him. Police cell, interrogation, abuse, disbelief of his
innocence, apathy in following up any other line of investigation. A
quick prosecution and his hopes eaten up by the system and
incarceration.
He was a resourceful man, he had money and contacts. He could find a
place to hide out and prove his innocence.
At least he could try rather than rolling over like some stupid animal
waiting to be culled.

He stepped outside wearing one of Lorna's sweat shirts, carrying his
own blood-stained shirt wrapped in a black plastic bag. The sweatshirt
was too small for him, and rode up his forearms but he judged it would
not attract attention; his trousers were dark enough to hide the
bloodstains on them. He had showered and scrubbed his face and hands
raw. He had not gone back to the attic. He had chosen not to try and
alter the crime-scene in any way.
Crossing the small front yard to the Cobra he stopped in his tracks as
several flashes threw shadows across the ground in front of him.
An electrical storm was tearing the sky apart.
He stood transfixed for a few moments. Normally the storms in England
consisted of the occasional flash followed by a rumble of thunder. This
was a perpetual flickering and flashing of light high up in the
atmosphere, back-lighting the clouds that must have arrived whilst he
was showering. The moon was still visible, but only just. There was no
rain, just a warm breeze that felt as though it was curving round him
in a tight spiral.
He broke his gaze from the sky and hurried over to the car.
He took the quickest route out of Clifton, finding a sense of relief as
he entered the slow crawl of traffic toward the city centre. His plan
for now was to get out of Bristol and find somewhere quiet to think
things through; but time would soon be against him. Once Lorna's body
was discovered, there would a manhunt; but would he even appear to the
police as a suspect? A glimmer of hope formed in Ulrich's mind. Nobody
knew about him. And who knew about the apartment? It might be days, or
even weeks before Lorna's body was discovered. Anybody who might have
witnessed him or his car arriving or leaving would have a hard job to
remember details so long after the event. There was hope. There was a
chance he could get out of this. But who had Jack been on the phone to
when he tried calling back? The police? Ulrich groaned out loud as his
guts tightened into a ball of ice. It was possible.
He decided not to call Jack back to find out. Some part of his fragile
sanity was pleading that it was better not to know right now.
Then a woman stepped into the red-stained light of his mind. Somebody
he knew who could help him in this situation. Samia.
"Samia." He said her name aloud, as if invoking a God for divine
assistance.
Samia was a girl he met at a New Years Eve party two years ago. The
party was held by a mutual acquaintance who ran a techno music bar in
London: dance music, dealer grade pharmaceuticals and a pantheon of
wild and beautiful women were the ingredients to a night he would never
forget. Samia had claimed his mind with a smile the moment their eyes
met across a coffee table cluttered with a mirror, rolled up paper-cash
and lines of coke. He had been fixated by her dark-skinned Latin
American looks, and with his natural state of arrogance fuelled by a
drug-boosted confidence he had simply taken her hand and led her away
into an unoccupied bedroom.
They had fucked most of the night, neither of them reaching orgasm
once, with frequent pauses to rejoin the main party. The ingested
cocktail of drugs and alcohol had created a frustrating barrier to the
zenith, the orgasm perpetually approaching but never arriving,
remaining at a maddening proximity which drove them on to increase
their physical exertions throughout the night. Ulrich had vivid
memories of the furious energy of their fucking and the sweat pouring
off their bodies. The encounter let to them maintaining a
roller-coaster relationship of sex and tangled emotions for seven
weeks. The ending had been swift. Samia wanted more commitment from
him. Ulrich had wanted to give less. Mutually exclusive concepts but
there had been no animosity to speak of. Just an abrupt stop to their
contact.
What had brought Samia onto the urgently lit stage of his thoughts was
the knowledge of her association with the criminal world. During the
time they had shared their lives with each other, he had learned she
was comfortably enmeshed within a web of grey area businesses and the
trade of information. Samia had contacts that could help him.

He rang her from a public phone booth in the carpark of busy
hyper-market. Encased within an ellipsoid of smoke-tinted plastic,
Ulrich felt a profound sense of safety and protection from the horror
stalking him through the world. He slipped a cash card into the
credit-reader and leant his shoulder into the curved embrace of
injection moulded plastic.
Samia's face flickered onto the screen after three rings. He was struck
by how different she looked; older, more serious. She took a couple of
moments to recognise him, then her face lit up with friendly surprise,
a look that rapidly switched to concern. "Ulrich, I would say it is
nice to see you but you look like shit. What's wrong?"
"I'm in trouble. I could use your help. Can I come and see you?"
"Are you sure I can help you?" Said warily.
"If you still have the same associates.....then yes."
A quick smile on her ruby red lips. "Different people...I've moved on,
but same function, yes. Are you in town?"
"About 3 hours away."
"Okay. See you in three."

Samia handed him a double shot of Glenmorangie in a glass then folded
herself up beside him in a wide purple armchair. She levelled a serious
gaze on him and watched for a few moments as he took slow sips of
whiskey and gathered his thoughts.
"So what's going on Ulrich?" Her voice was low, soothing.
He told her everything. From the moment of waking up in Zendori with
the new implant to waking up on Lorna's sofa and discovering her body.
Samia remained quiet throughout, listening intently. When he had
finished he shrugged his shoulders with a helpless flap of his hand,
knocked back the last of his whiskey then slumped into the chair. "So
that brings me here." He said.
"Crawling for help." She said slowly.
He caught the edge to her voice and suddenly felt himself exposed and
vulnerable; he had revealed everything expecting a sympathetic
reaction. A wave of nausea went through him as he considered the
negative reaction. Before he could place his fears into words she said,
"Why would anybody go to such lengths to frame you?"
He stared at her and squirmed under her gaze; she was doubting his
innocence. He wrestled with the urge to stand up and walk out, knowing
that would achieve nothing but cut him off from the only help he
had.
"I-I don't know why!" He struggled to find a reason.. "There are people
capable of pulling this off, there has to be a reason somewhere, it's
true it doesn't make any sense."
"It doesn't make sense alright." Hostility in her voice, "Jesus Ulrich,
this is a real head fuck to drop on somebody after how long? Nearly two
years? I am having a very hard time with this."
"It know....I...." He expelled a heavy breath, emotions tearing into
him. "This is...." He breathed out again, shaking his head. "What else
can I do? Who else do I go to?"
She cut him off. "It's already all over the media."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, what you have just told me is already out on all the media
feeds and you're the main suspect."
He sat and looked at her in numbed silence. He couldn't feel the seat
beneath him. His mouth moved but no words came out.
"I'm suspicious that the police discovered her body so quickly; from
what you have told me it does not seem that anybody heard her being
killed and you walked away from her place without incident. So how did
the police get there so quickly?"
"Somebody must have told them." He suggested.
"It would seem so." Her voice bitter, "Right now the whole country
knows you as a murderer and I get to have the focus of a massive
manhunt on my life, which I can do without so thank you for dropping by
Ulrich, and by the way, why don't you tell me the rest of the fucking
story."
He was shaking his head wearily "This is bad. This is so bad."
Confusion flickered across his features. "The rest of the story? What
more can I tell you?"
"Ulrich. There have been seventeen other killings. All like your
girlfriend Lorna. All butchered in the same way."
He felt the blood freeze in his veins.
She went on, "The police have tied her murder into a string of
killings. The media are crawling all over the story. Seventeen women.
All victims of snuff sims. Do you work in the snuff sim industry
Ulrich? You've got your fingers in so many pies it would not surprise
me!"
"No!" He was horrified. "Snuff sims. People being murdered for
playback?"
"Black jacks. Wank material for sick freaks. The sickest ones playback
the sim recording made by the victim wearing the recording rig. How
anybody gets a hard on going through the experience of being murdered
defies my belief. Have you placed your friend's position within this
puzzle yet? Jack Warner."
"You think he's involved?" It was an open question.
Samia shrugged, glanced around her lounge, "He's your friend. You tell
me. Could he be involved?"
Ulrich brought a hand to his face and dug the tips of his fingers into
the sockets of his eyes. "God. I don't know anything right now."
"You need to take a good look at who you can trust Ulrich. If you're
being true here, then somebody has done a first class job of setting
you up."
Ulrich felt the sting of anger in his face, "Do you really think I
could do those things!"
"You woke up covered in her blood, Ulrich. Jack told you the recording
is your own."
Ulrich furrowed his brow, long moments passed as his mind mulled
through a million possibilities. "That is if I can believe what he
tells me."
"That's for you to decide." She said pointedly.
He slumped back, his chin almost touching his chest. A theory as to
what might be going on began to form in his mind; the palms of his
hands became cold and damp with nervous sweat, his throat became hot
and dehydrated.
Samia leant forward in the chair, her arms pointing down between her
knees. He felt the brush of her thigh against his and savoured the heat
of her against him. She twisted her neck and looked back at him, her
expression one of deliberation. "The question I would be asking, if
somebody had set me up like this, is....why?"
He watched her eyes in the soft light of the room, mesmerised by their
darkness and suddenly wishing to be locked in a room with her
alone.
She said, "What about the Heredotus project?"
He frowned harshly, "How do you know about that?"
Samia turned her head so that she face forward, her neck slightly
arched. "It's big news in the sim industry. Quite a coup you pulled
off. Does the project principally use technology developed by
Zendori?"
"No not principally. The project entirely uses technology developed by
Zendori. Jack Warner's baby outclasses any of the existing sim-stim
playback systems."
Samia twisted her head back round to look at him. "How much is the deal
worth to Zendori?"
"Thirty five million."
"Is that for the project or us that what would come into Zendori's
pockets?" She probed.
"That's the expected cost of Zendori's involvement in the
project."
Samia nodded briefly, "And what is your cut?"
"Four million."
"Not a small amount Ulrich."
Ulrich shook his head, "I don't see your point here Samia, other to
imply that Jack would profit from my removal from the loop now that the
project is underway."
Samia widened her eyes, "Wouldn't he profit from that? Wasn't it Jack
that suggested you take on the new implant? I mean, he put it inside
your head then used it to get rid of you."
"Yes, agreed, very possible, but my fee comes out of the project itself
and not Zendori's thirty five million. I can't count your argument as a
valid motive."
She pouted, blew out through her lips. "Shit. Thought I had a good one
there."
Ulrich rocked his head back against the chair and contemplated the idea
coming together in his head. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it,
then finally said, "There might be an explanation."
She looked at him as if to say 'go on'.
He cleared his throat, finished the last of the whiskey, hunched
forward and dropped the empty glass onto the floor. "The Heredotus
Project was compiled to record sites valuable to the member countries
heritage and universal history of Europe. There was another side to the
project, that I was privy to. Well, (hesitating) I can't go into
details but it involves the government of one of the member's taking a
more pro-active role in the filming and documenting of certain sites
not entirely of historical interest."
"Are you talking about spying Ulrich?" There was an ironic smirk on
her face.
"In a round-about way." He said.
"Does Jack know about this?"
"No, no way. One of the reasons I accepted the new implant was to
facilitate this extra-curricular role. I was advised it would be
useful."
"By this particular government?"
"Yes." His answer was cool.
"And does this particular government have access to the same implant
and software?"
"Yes." He glanced awkwardly around the walls of the room. "I acquired
an evaluation rig for them."
Samia slumped back into the chair, a slight space between them; she
angled her head to look at him with an expression that said: Case
Closed.
Ulrich slowly lowered with eyes to the floor, "Shit."
"It looks like you've fallen foul of their Dirty Tricks
department."
Buying into the idea Ulrich added, "They don't even have to kill me.
Just discredit me with a murder record so anything I might say in the
future would be disregarded."
"They could have just killed you though." Samia said, slightly
puzzled.
Ulrich shook his head quickly. "No, I'm still an asset, best to keep me
alive and play me on a dangling wire. Bastards."
He sat there, glaring at a space between the floor and infinity.
Samia spoke after a few moments, her voice had changed to a hardsell.
"Okay Ulrich, we need to talk about what you want."
"I want to find out what the hell is going on and why." He said
quietly.
She nodded slowly, then said, "Do you want somewhere to lie low whilst
you sort your crap out?"
He nodded, grateful.
"That's cool." She said, "But it's going to cost you. Price for a
friend, bargain discount, one grand a week."
"Bloody hell." He muttered and felt an icy sensation go through his
guts, followed by a sickly wave of heat that brought him out in a body
sweat. "I feel as though the vultures are picking at me before I am
even dead."
Samia shrugged, waiting for an answer.
He wiped at his brow, blinking rapidly, fighting the chaos of his
thoughts and the surging downward spiral of his emotions. "One
thousand." he muttered, and looked at her, wanting some sort of
softening statement but only met the impenetrable facade of somebody
making a pitch.
He dropped his gaze and stared at the floor, the same thoughts flying
around the edges of his skull until their momentum forced him to lift
his head and concede; "What does that get me?"
"A bed, a table, a chair, a house computer console, a phone line and
the seal on my lips. Next problem, how are you going to pay us?"
"I have money." He answered, defensive.
"No you don't. You're a fugitive. All your assets are frozen."
"Well you've got a hacker working for you&;#8230;.. get the money
yourself!" Frustrated.
"You want us to hack an international bank? We're good but not that
good and cracking a financial house data core would cost you more than
you could afford. We need to look lateral. You're a smart man Ulrich,
tell me you've got a tax free net-egg going in an off-shore account."
She looked at him and left him to answer.
His face dropped and he bowed his head as he silently mouthed swear
words. Looking up again he met her gaze, "Smart girl."
"Good, we can help you then. How much have you got?"
"What?" Incredulous.
"There's no such thing as credit in this biz, sweetie, I need to know
how long you're good for."
He sighed with exasperation then reluctantly told her, "I'm not sure
of the latest exchange rates but it's in the region of ?350-k"
"Where were you thinking of retiring? High-orbit? You've been a busy
squirrel putting all that away. I should have worked harder to keep you
in my bed." She flashes a solicitous smile.
Ulrich sneered and rolled his head to the side. Fucking dirty cunt, he
thought.
"I'll need the access codes to-"
"To hell with that!" He snapped. He pushed himself up from the chair
and span round to face her. His voice dropped into a low tone of
simmering tension. "You tell me how much you need, I'll authorise the
transfers but I'll be damned if I am giving you control of those
funds."
Samia smiled thinly, "What's wrong sweetie, don't you trust me?"
"No." He said wearily. "No I don't." He pulled free of her gaze, not
comfortable with the sudden downgrading of his trust and friendship to
a black market deal.
"It's not important." She said, dismissive, and climbed up from the
chair. She stood in front of him. "You don't have a choice. We'll need
ten thousand in advance." She walked away and crossed the room to the
window. "Connor will pop round later to sort you out with a trace-free
connection to your nest-egg."
Ulrich turned as she passed him, his eyes tracking her movements.
"Who's Connor?"
"A friend. He specialises. Computer fraud and intrusion. Just the man
for you."

Ulrich went to the door of the apartment he had been given; it was a
converted attic space, comfortable enough and located in a modern part
of the city. There were some clothes in the wardrobe, male, and the
fridge smelled of bottled sauces as though recently emptied. The art on
the walls consisted of posters of scantily clad women pulling
body-builder poses and a wall sized picture of some group which Ulrich
could only vaguely relate too as looking something like a heavy rock
combined with the goths he used to see striding around in his youth.
The place had more of a feel of a lived in apartment than a black
market safe house on ice. It was three in the morning and he presumed
that the caller was going to be Connor.
Ulrich popped the door open enough to view the man on the other side,
keeping his foot by the bottom edge, ready to kick it shut for what
ever reason. Samia had gone through the process of removing his car and
mo-com, ensuring he was relatively safe but he was not in any position
to relax.
The man was short, slim and pale skinned with dirty blonde hair, a
patchy beard and deep blue rings below his pale blue eyes. Ulrich's
first impression was that the man was a drug addict, followed by a
second observation: the twin skin-coloured rims of data ports
surgically drilled into the side of his skull, just on the edge of his
hair-line. The man had a thin leopard skin satchel slung from one
shoulder, typical for a portable workstation.
"Connor?"
"Yeah, that's me." The man focussed in on the voice coming through the
crack of space between the door and frame. "You gonna let me in?"
Ulrich closed the door for a moment and placed the serrated knife he'd
taken from the kitchen on a shelf to one side of the door. He stepped
back, opened the door wide and allowed Connor to enter.
Conner brushed past him and strode into the long lounge, glancing
around like a man familiar with the place; he unslung the satchel and
lowered it carefully onto a small black leatherette sofa. Ulrich could
sense his fear like a smell of old sweat; offensive to him.
Connor turned and faced him, "How do you like the digs?
Comfortable?"
Ulrich closed the door. "Yes. They're adequate. You know this place
well then. Many guests?"
Connor seemed to become uncomfortable, he wiped the palms of his hands
on the knees of his khaki combat trousers, "Did Samia leave anything in
here to drink?"
Ulrich stayed by the door. He noticed the man's eyes had already
glanced toward a cupboard several times. The question was redundant,
artful even. "No. I don't believe she did." He answered with
contempt.
Connor stopped and looked across at Ulrich. It was the first time they
had made proper eye contact; Connor swallowed hard, sucked his lips in
and inhaled through his nose pulling his shoulders up into a slow shrug
before letting them drop. "Well, okay then." Getting down to
business.
Connor twisted round, picked up the satchel and began unzipping it;
then he stopped, at first as if pondering an idea but then he began
laughing, nervously, uncomfortable with the situation he was finding
himself in. He shook his head, grinning self consciously and put the
satchel down. A slimy sort of confidence was spreading across the man's
features.
"Is there a problem?" Ulrich asked the other, his voice like
ice.
"No. No problem just&;#8230; what did Samia tell you?"
"Tell me? About what?"
Connor regarded him speculatively for a moment, "Uh-hu." He nodded
slowly at some internal diatribe. "Do you want to sit or something,
you're making me jumpy standing over there like a block of
concrete."
"No. I am fine here." Rapidly loosing patience.
"Right." Connor spoke warily, sensing that Ulrich was going to be
difficult.
Ulrich explained wearily, "Samia told me I have to use you to secure
ten thousand from a private account."
"Ten thousand, yeah, right." Connor looked around for no reason,
uncertainty creeping into his actions.
"Mister Connor, or whatever your name is." Ulrich spoke slowly,
calmly, without changing tone. "I deal every day with big business. I
deal with professional scumballs of every calibre who all try to fuck
me with their own agenda. You have an agenda Mr Connor. Please do us
all the service of spitting it out, before you shit your pants."
Connor bristled, "Yeah-yeah big guy. Whatever. Save your fancy
boardroom power plays for your suit buddies. Your bullshit doesn't cut
it with me here. Deep down I know you're a sick little puppy."
"Really." A frosty smile. "Why don't you enlighten me."
Connor let out a short shrill laugh. "Oh I will. And for more than
ten-K. I did some digging around Zendori's computer system tonight. I
followed Samia's line that you were set up for that woman's murder so I
guessed a good place to look for dirt would be with the company that
could have forged the sim recording in your skull, and with your long
time buddy Jack Warner."
A sour taste spilled into Ulrich's mouth, the aperitif to
betrayal?
Connor was smiling indulgently.
"Jack is freaking out right now." He told Ulrich. "Moving files onto
detachable storage, changing passwords, locking everything down tight.
I'm in there with him, a ghost in the machine, up close and personal,
watching everything he's doing, seeing everything he touches. I'm in
ecstasy. I'm into his data so deep I can taste the sweat on his
interface jacks. So I get right to the heart of what he's trying to
hide."
Connor went quiet, savouring his moment; "Guilt! Down to the core!
Man, there were solid megabytes of journal pages, spanning years... I
only dipped into them but they read like religious psycho babble.
Definitely a few screws rattling loose in your friend's head. Smart
though. Thinks fast. Knows how to cover his ass quick. Did you know he
called the police as soon as you rang him from that girl's
place?"
Ulrich remained silent.
"He shopped your ass. He's locking you out for good. What I read, he
called you an unacceptable risk. Sure, he's guilty about it. He wrote
pages about his suffering and the torment of knowledge and blah blah
blah, but the man has had enough of you."
Ulrich felt his face muscles clenching and unclenching. He frowned at
Connor's last statement: a lot more had not been said. Somewhere in all
this was a build up to a price for Connor's silence, or similar demand
of extortion. "Go on."
Connor looked at him frankly, apparently wanting to watch the impact of
what he had to tell. "That implant in your head. State of the art.
Zendori. They'll make a ton of money from the sim market with it if
Jack can keep his big secret under wraps."
A pause. Ulrich gritted his teeth and spat the words, "Secret.... what
secret?"
Connor put a finger to his lips and smiled around a shush sound.
"Quiet..... you might wake the dead."
"What?"
"There was more to the surgery than you realise. More than you are
able to recall anyway. You and Jack had a deal. He was going to help
you forget."
"I don't follow."
"People change Ulrich. Bad people mend their ways and become good.
Good people fall and become bad and spend the rest of their miserable
lives fighting God. But do you think monsters can ever develop a
conscience?"
"I have not the slightest clue what you are rambling on about."
Connor came out with it, cold and un-diluted. "You're a murderer
Ulrich. You murder women and you do it for money. You and Jack, you're
in business together. His contacts provided the meat, Jack provided the
sim recording gear and editing facilities and you wore the rig and
butchered the girls."
Ulrich found his legs buckling beneath him; he grabbed the shelf
behind him for support. Connor's voice sounded distant.
"Jack made films of you doing it. Mementos or some sort of lever to
use against you in a possible future, who knows. I've seen them. I've
seen what you did." Connor's cocky facade faded with the trauma of his
own memories of what he had watched. Ulrich watched him struggle to
keep control.
"You're sick. You're a fucking monster. And it seems you developed a
conscience. You had a problem with the killing. Didn't like the
memories. Bad for business, though, eh? If you stopped. Your sim's are
big money on the snuff circuit. So Jack does a little speciality
surgery, installs the new sim implant to replace the wearable rig and
does a little bit of human programming on your memory. I guess the idea
was that you could do the recording but not recall the process."
"But it didn't work." Ulrich said flatly.
"Nope."
"Why did I kill Lorna?" He turned back from the shelf, the strength
returning to his legs.
Connor shrugged, "I don't know. Jack rambled on in his journal about
your inner demons gaining control. Quasi religious mumbo jumbo."
Ulrich stood stationary for a long moment, considering everything he
had been told. Eventually he asked, "What do you want?"
"Three hundred and fifty thousand. All of it."
Ulrich heard a soft click somewhere behind him. He turned briefly to
look but there was nobody there. He turned back and saw Connor glaring
at him, daring him to refuse. Ulrich flinched as he felt a tiny impact
strike the back of his neck. Like an insect sting. A nerve responding
to the stimuli, he realised now, just before the darkness rolled down
over his vision. He heard some part of him laughing. He could already
sense himself moving beyond his own control. He could feel the handle
of the knife in his hand. The darkness deepened and left him outside
the main event, a sudden burst of screaming faded into nothing.
He knew he would wake up to find a recording waiting for him.
A new sim.

END