And I wondered. When I got home, what I would do instead. I must have made a noise, because the old woman stopped and stared at me. She lifted her chin in rough greeting.
“You all right, cousin?”
“Fine,” I said. And then, “A little hungry.”
She shrugged and went back to sweeping. “At least you know it.”
Assassins
JACK SKILLINGSTEAD AND BURT COURTIER
Since 2003, Jack Skillingstead has sold more than forty short stories to major science fiction and fantasy publications. His work has been translated into Russian, Polish, Czech, French, Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese. In 2013, his novel Life on the Preservation was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. Jack has also been a finalist for the Sturgeon Award. He lives in Seattle with his wife, writer Nancy Kress.
Burt Courtier has worked as a documentation manager, business editor, and freelance writer in Japan and the United States. His nonfiction work appeared in Japan Quarterly. Burt lives in Southern California with his wife and daughter.
Here they introduce us to a very different kind of assassin….
It will be a particularly brutal kill, even by her standards.
She sat in warm shade at an outdoor café along the Calle de las Huertes, not far from the Prado Museum. Sonia needed to work in public spaces, needed to witness the human cost. Tourists, students, illegals and the unemployed crowded the surrounding tables—all strangers. But that was nothing new. She could touch them only by wounding them, as she had been wounded. What would millions of Experiencers think if they knew a coward lurked behind Simone The Slayer?
Black-shirted waiters circulated between the tables. A few feet away a woman in a white sundress laughed. About thirty years old, she wore Experiencer glasses, the lenses polarized for the sun, and a headscarf. The bearded young man sharing her table kissed her neck playfully, and she laughed again. Of the hundred or so people visible to Sonia, maybe two-thirds of them wore Experiencer glasses, and many of them were fully immersed, the lenses gone a dully-reflective silver, like drawing a screen between the outer world and Labyrinthiad. Holding hands, an older couple in matching tropical shirts strolled out of the umbrella shade of the cafe and crossed the sun-struck plaza. Pigeons swooped and plunged, their black shadows gliding over the bricks. Motorbikes threaded through the moving crowds, their two-stroke engines making a lawn-mower racket.
“Hasta luego.” It was the bearded man. He stood up and blew a kiss at the woman in the white sundress. She laughed and waved at him, like she was brushing off a fly. Walking backwards from their table, he bumped into Sonia. She jerked away. “Perdón,” he said, turning and bowing. She scowled at him; Sonia didn’t like to be touched. He shrugged and left her alone. His girlfriend touched the right temple of her Experiencer glasses. The lenses turned silver. Sonia looked away.
It was time.
Sonia placed her Cube next to her napkin, leaned forward and whispered the unlocking code. Glowing symbols floated above the table. Her long fingers made slight, almost imperceptible motions as she manipulated content, combining and recombining intricate patterns. The military-grade throat mic picked up her sub-vocal directions and voiceovers. Sonia’s custom software reshaped her tonal qualities to create her character’s signature voice—a voice that had insinuated itself into a million nightmares. Simone.
It was ready.
Sonia reached for her neglected macchiato. She sipped, absently licked bitter foam from her lips, set the cup down. Taking a pause. Virtual murder was still murder—the murder of emotional attachments. She ought to know. Sonia had cherished the character Emi Nakano, until the Editors discontinued Emi’s existence on the grounds of inadequate popularity scores. When Emi suffered death by Editor, something died in Sonia, too. Now she felt connected only to the pain she caused. Maybe she had replaced her Emi Nakano obsession with her own meta assassin—but so what? Call it the failed transfiguration of revenge.
All right.
She uploaded her data to a rendering engine that converted her C-sym programming into a finished scene. A final hesitant pause… and she slipped the module undetected into the vast meta story that was Labyrinthiad. Like slipping a dagger between ribs to pierce the heart of a created world. In a moment, Ellis Ng would “die.” Was Sonia the only one who recognized Ellis as nothing more than an emotional trap for the self-deluded?
Sonia’s hands shook as she reached for her coffee. She emptied the cup and set it down. A cigarette would have helped her nerves, but they were banned now even in Europe.
Mileva Kosich, sitting on a bench across from the Office of Public Affairs, eye-flicked behind her Experiencer glasses. It was her lunch break and she just had time to meet her virtual friend, Ellis Ng. Belgrade disappeared, and Mileva was gliding in a sunboat over a crystal blue pond. Ellis approached in his own sunboat, its solar net billowing like a gossamer shell. Of course, Ellis was legion, and millions of Experiencers considered him a friend, but that didn’t undercut Mileva’s joy at the sight of his approach. Everyone enjoyed their own personal Ellis. He stood up and waved with two fingers extended (his customary greeting), making the boat rock. A black-winged personal flying suit swept down out of the empty sky. Mileva caught her breath. Simone! The assassin fired a projectile and Ellis Ng’s sunboat exploded in a plume of flesh and fiberglass. Shocked, Mileva fumbled her glasses off. She sat on the bench, too upset to move.
Sonia killed only the popular characters. Five so far. And once slain, they resisted the Editor’s attempts to resurrect them. Sonia’s killing routines remained with a character and haunted them even in virtual death. The resurrected were lifeless zombies compared to their former selves. Their popularity, as defined continuously by the Experiencers, plummeted and they were quickly edited out. Of course, “life” in Labyrinthiad was an oxymoron, perpetuated by the mock-divine spark of rudimentary AI. Characters like Ng became the perfect companions because they analyzed your personality and speech and fed you tailor-made conversation. Nevertheless, waves of real despair followed the death of young eCelebs. Taking down beloved characters and the income streams they represented to the Publishers was dangerous. Real world dangerous.
Hachiro Jin, closed inside an egg-shaped Sleep Pod in the Helsinki Airport, touched the temple of his glasses and went full-immersion. It would be pleasant to pass a few minutes with Ellis Ng. The virtue of a virtual friend was availability without complications. Hachiro’s layover was four hours, more than enough time to catch up on sleep and conversation with a friend who seemed perfectly to understand the worries of a forty-three-year-old businessman. Ellis, waiting for Hachiro on a red footbridge in the Sankeien Gardens, smiled and raised his hand—and then collapsed, a shaft protruding from the back of his head. Simone The Slayer stood a moment in his place. “Gomen-nasai, Hachiro-kun,”she said, flashing a lifeless smile before flickering out of existence. In the Sleep Pod, Hachiro ripped off his glasses, swearing.
Sonia waited for the reaction. Any moment now. Then a waiter stepped in front of her, blocking her view. He bent forward, reaching for her empty cup, his eyes a turquoise gleam. Just like the eyes of Sonia’s character-killer, Simone. So many people affected body modifications that emulated favorite Labyrinthiad personalities. This waiter had even added Simone’s signature scar, like a back-slash setting off the corner of his mouth.