“No, I worked in the call centre and the recruitment agency, well, a kind of recruitment agency, they were the same place really, different parts of the same organisation.”
“So… was it sales, or customer service, or…?”
“We had a service for adventurers, I mean amateur adventurers, the ones who didn’t get paid, they could call up and find out who they were up against, get help if they needed it, call the professionals in, that kind of thing.”
“So anyone could be an adventurer? How many people had powers on your world?”
“Forty per cent. Maybe fifty, sixty in some areas.”
“That’s… very strange.”
She shrugged. “It’s why the world was so fucked up. You can’t stop someone with superpowers trying to save the world or whatever, so they licensed it. They did a psych evaluation, gave you some training, you paid your fee, they let you run around on the rooftops scaring muggers.”
“I can see how that would cause problems.”
“Hah. You don’t know the half of it. Once I’d been in the call centre for a while, I moved over to dealing with applications. Interviewing them, trying to stop the real idiots from getting a licence, that kind of thing…”
“Was that what you were doing when it happened?”
She paused for a moment. “Yeah.”
“Can you tell me…?”
She sighed. “I was interviewing this guy. He could go sort of half invisible so he thought he could be an adventurer. I was trying to talk him out of it because really, it was disgusting, you could see all his organs and everything. Poor kid.”
“What happened?”
“He caught fire. Got so hot he burned into powder in just a second. At first I thought it was his power backfiring on him but when I went to the office for help, all I saw was ash. And outside… it was like a dust storm. Or a building collapse. Clouds of it, everywhere. And that was it. For all of them.”
7. Group
Iokan cleared his throat. “I have a little experience with this kind of thing…”
“Really?” I said.
“Oh, bloody hell, you’re not pretending to be a nutcase as well, are you?” said Olivia.
“No, but—”
“Oh, so you are a nutcase.”
Iokan smiled. “Very witty, Olivia. No, what I mean is, I know a little bit about police work. And I think there’s something missing from the story.”
“Go on,” I said.
“If you’re infiltrating an organisation, or a world, or anything, really, it’s very unusual for someone to do it on their own. There’s usually someone backing you up. I was wondering if she had an accomplice.”
“Forgive me for asking what must seem an obvious question,” said Kwame, “but how can you have an accomplice if you are the last member of your species?”
Iokan shrugged. “Was she?”
“Yes. Very definitely,” I said.
“What if it was someone else?” asked Pew.
“Another species?” asked Kwame.
“Well… you can have more than one species on a world…”
“She didn’t have an accomplice,” I said. “But she did have some very advanced technology.”
“Artificial Intelligence?” asked Elsbet, suddenly on edge.
“No. Not intelligent as such, but very sophisticated.”
“How could she possibly have access to a device that could defeat your security?” asked Kwame.
“We’re not sure.”
“Perhaps something left behind by another species…?” asked Iokan.
“We don’t think so.”
“Are you certain?”
“We’re still looking into it,” I said.
8. Liss
“What about the device?” I asked.
“The what?”
“The one that let you get past our security. The one you were hiding in the remote for your screenplayer.”
“Oh, so you found it then,” said Liss with a scowl.
“Was that kind of device common on your world?”
“There was too much of that kind of crap.”
“So it was a common device?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Okay…”
“I meant there was too much crap from the superbrains.”
“Superbrains?”
“Look, lots of people had powers. Some of them, it was being clever. Too clever. A lot of them went mad. That’s what was wrong with the world. They built all this amazing stuff but then one of them would do something like wipe out all the wheat and rice so they could find out if people could eat some horrible crap they made from rocks, or invent some healing gloop that ended up eating people and mashing them together into one great big blob, or try and stop the hurricanes and give us a winter that lasted three years instead…”
She put her head in her hands.
“And then all the idiots who thought they could save the world just because they could breathe fire or punch through steel would go after them and half the time they just made it worse.” She lifted her head again, eyes damp. “That security gizmo was something they had in the vault at the PRG. Don’t ask me how it works. It just does. The guy who made it was doing seven to twelve for bank robbery in the low tech prison in Hallitasset. That thing’s all that’s left of him. Except for the ash.”
9. Group
“I suppose the question is, why did she do it?” said Iokan.
“Well, she seemed to be investigating, “ I said. “Beyond that I can’t tell you. But if you’d like to discuss it, I don’t have any objections.”
“It’s revenge,” said Pew.
“Why do you say that?”
“I mean, what happened on her world wasn’t natural. Somebody did it. Maybe she wants to get back at them.”
“She wouldn’t know what revenge is,” said Olivia. “She thinks a harsh word is a slap in the face…”
“I’d do it.” Pew suddenly sounded on edge, and everyone looked up at him.
“Would you?” asked Iokan.
“Yes.”
“Would you kill?”
Pew only took a second to think about it. “Yes.”
“Do you think that would make anything better?”
“Yes. It’d make me better.”
“How so?”
“I wouldn’t be a coward.”
“You’re not a coward. Don’t be stupid,” muttered Olivia.
“Yes I am.”
“Stop talking rot! Just because you’re not killing every bloody Soo you can lay your hands on doesn’t mean you’re a coward. I used to do it with revenants but it doesn’t do any good, it doesn’t matter how many you kill, you don’t feel any better so stop it.”
Pew sighed and stopped talking.
10. Liss
“What did you do after it happened?” I asked.
“I don’t remember. I blanked out for a couple of days. I was drinking. I went to find my parents and I buried them…”
“So that part was true?”
She looked straight at me. “Every word.”
“I’m so sorry, Liss.”
She sighed and looked down. “And then I went home. Opened another bottle. Skipped a few days…” She shook her head. “Then I snapped out of it.”
“By yourself?”
“No. The computer at the PRG found me. The damn thing kept pestering me. It took over the sound systems in all the apartments nearby to get my attention.”
“Was that an artificial intelligence?”
“Not really. All the real AIs were eaten by a virus years ago — another fucking mess from a superbrain. All they had at the PRG was an automated system. Once everyone was gone it went into survival mode and took over all the country’s computers to stop everything falling apart…”