CTRL S

by Andy Briggs

Genres: Science Fiction

Synopsis

Everyone knows crime is a major problem in the virtual reality world of SPACE. And the smarter criminals realized long ago that to fully exploit people in the real world, they need to hunt the vulnerable in VR.

So when his troubled mother disappears one day, VR-obsessed Baxter knows that to save her life he must first track her down in SPACE.

But how do you solve a mystery in a world without fingerprints, DNA, or clues?

Baxter has done it in video games his whole life. But this time things are about to get very real . . .

Release date: August 11, 2020

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 416

Sample

Chapter One



The distinctive ammonia stench of approaching death told Theo everything he needed to know about today.

Thursdays were officially crap.

He gripped the stock of his BFG1138 assault rifle tighter. The carbon fibre felt smooth beneath his fingers, and refreshingly cool in the oppressive jungle humidity. Sucking in a sharp breath, he studied the lush crimson foliage that stretched upwards with such hunger it blotted the azure sky, allowing only thick spears of light to puncture the canopy.

A flock of reptilian parrots suddenly took flight with a warbling alarm call. Their silly circular wings frantically sliced through the air like paddle steamers as they detected an unseen threat. Theo’s heart hammered in his chest. He flinched when Baxter bumped him from behind as the team clustered together back to back, facing the four avenues that stretched through the trees before them. Archways carved from the colossal trunks, each large enough to swallow a bus and dark enough to conceal death.

‘You better pray you don’t get out of this alive, Milton,’ Baxter growled at the towering barbarian next to him. He wobbled his machete for emphasis. Blue veins etched across the blade throbbed as if it were alive. ‘Or this’ll be going on a colonic adventure up your—’ He did a double take. ‘Where the hell’s your rifle?’

‘I d-dropped it,’ stammered Milton.

He was the fool responsible for leading them down a mud chute that pitched them off the clifftop and into this hellhole of a crater. The six-foot-something barbarian cracked his knuckles, raising his fists and cycling them pathetically.

‘But I’m ready.’

‘You’re a moron!’

‘Boys? Oh, boys?’ sang Clemmie in a voice at odds with the overlapping blood-red plate mail armour encompassing her mountainous body. Her helmet had a single shallow-angled V-shaped slit, hiding her face. ‘We are on time crisis.’

She tapped a countdown on her wrist gauntlet; the basic red LEDs resembled an antique digital alarm clock face. It had already run over the ninety second mark.

‘Bollocks!’ exclaimed Theo. ‘How did that happen?’

‘I thought you were keeping an eye on it,’ Baxter added, eyes darting nervously back to the tunnel in front of him.

‘I don’t know,’ Clemmie growled, deliberately nudging her elbow into the armour protecting Baxter’s kidneys. ‘You lost track of time too.’

‘Maybe it’s broken?’ said Milton hopefully. ‘That last magic field might have crashed it. Nothing’s working properly. This place is as buggy as hell,’ he added, swatting at a fist-sized mosquito as it buzzed past him, its hypodermic syringe nose wagging threateningly.

Theo sensed all the effort they’d piled into this quest was about to unravel.

‘Keep it together, guys. We manage to get through one of these tunnels alive and that’s it.’

Salvation.

They couldn’t afford to die now – but in less than one minute they would be ejected. And there was nothing worse than that. Well, almost nothing.

There was a sudden rush of movement from the tree in front of Baxter, accompanied by a strong waft of a bitter acid that made them all retch, as a screaming beast emerged. Standing twelve feet tall, the Tracyon was a combination of a ferocious dinosaur and a shark. The quadruped raced into the clearing at full pelt. A pair of laser cannons held by leather straps on its shoulder blades unleashed streams of green plasma that tore apart the dead wood around them. The monster unhinged its jaw and bellowed thick phlegm.

Theo tried not to inhale. The rank miasma was one of the Tracyon’s basic defences. He retaliated with a war cry, and unleashed his assault rifle’s fury.

‘Come on! This is it!’

A well-placed shot from Clemmie blew one of the beast’s cannons apart. The explosion ripped a chunk of the creature’s shoulder off, forcing it to stumble sideways, narrowly missing crushing Milton, who had been attempting to sneak around it.

The Tracyon angled its body, flipping around a mighty tail barbed with a pair of jagged blades made from razor-sharp cartilage. They struck Milton in a powerful scissor motion.

‘Christ!’ Baxter yelled as Milton was cut in two.

Red mist sprayed the remaining three warriors as they scattered in different directions. There was no sense of co-ordination – just raw survival instinct powered them now.

Theo ignored the pounding of a laser weapon to his left. He presumed it was Clemmie; she was a pit bull and he hoped her brave actions would buy him enough time to circle around the monster and slip into the tunnel.

He panicked as he stumbled over Milton’s still-twitching torso, slipping on the torrent of blood oozing out of his friend. His arms flailed as he caught his balance, but at the expense of his rifle.

Sod it. There was no time to retrieve it. A flicker of light in the tunnel revealed a glowing egg-shaped orb. The plasma on its surface rippled beguilingly.

The prize.

Everything they had been working towards this last week was almost within reach. He ignored a scream from behind him – that was Clemmie down – and raced for the orb. Then Baxter was suddenly beside him, racing for the prize. He shouldered Theo, propelling him towards the monster as bait. Theo’s knee painfully cracked against the floor as he fell, the kneecap shattering on a jagged rock as it took his full weight.

A bass-heavy chime suddenly sounded and a voice reverberated inside his skull.

‘Ejection protocol initiated. Prepare to sink.’

Distracted, Theo didn’t notice the Tracyon catch up with him. Its expanding jaws, lined with six rows of serrated teeth, filled his vision. The last thing he felt was the powerful blow either side of his ribcage as the monster effortlessly chomped him in half.

The world around him rapidly dissolved into the familiar drabness of his living room. It took a few seconds for his senses to kick in. The stale smell of the flat assaulted him; scent was the first sense to go when ascending from The Real into the virtual, and the last to kick in when returning.

Rapid ejection from SPACE sometimes caused brief but intense nausea, and Theo’s stomach was telling him it was his turn. He yanked his headset off and wiped the thin beads of sweat from his brow. He had to close his eyes momentarily as the room swam around him and he fought to keep down the Marmite sandwich in his stomach.

He was alone; his friends were back in their respective homes, he hoped also throwing up on their bedroom furnishings. Feeling irritable, he filled a coffee-stained mug with lukewarm water from the tap and downed half in one continuous gulp, wincing at the chemical taste it left in his mouth. Being in SPACE for the maximum three hours had really taken it out of him. He gazed through the kitchen window, squinting against the bright sunlight reflecting off the carbon copy array of tower blocks. Somehow it didn’t look quite as vibrant as the virtual world. Then again, he mused, that was the point of the mandatory time limit. To get people outside before their brains fried from being plugged into the system for too long.

He sighed. Where was the fun in that?







Chapter Two



The sizzle of meat made Theo’s stomach twitch. He’d had a very different vision for his future than the reality thrust upon him: one where his dad was around; one in which he was having an awesome time in university, with more real-world sex than lectures. Life wasn’t supposed to be like this. Where were all the opportunities? The flying cars? And what had happened to robots taking over jobs so he wouldn’t have to toss burgers in a dump like this?

Whatever had happened to the dreaded singularity, when AI would turn the toaster into mankind’s robot overlord? Yet another future prediction that was wildly askew from the facts, robbing his future of any possible thrills or adventures.

‘Four cheese – extra cheese, no greens,’ Wayne called from the counter.

Theo glanced at the customers, who looked almost as greasy as the synthetic meat patties he was preparing.

He had never envisioned working in such a menial job, especially in a place that prided itself on serving up burgers that have never seen a real animal – or vegetable – but had been grown in Petri dishes, then printed into burger-shaped patties straight on the griddle. Despite that, Synger was London’s trendiest synthetic eatery, and since leaving college it was the only job he was able to get. All dreams of being an engineer were stomped on the moment his mother had announced she was struggling to pay the bills. And since it was just the two of them, what choice did he have?

He watched the genetically engineered proteins turn the burgers a perfect shade of brown in a minute. On autopilot, he dropped slices of substitute cheese – which had no direct genetic bovine link – on them before sliding them onto the waiting wheat-free buns. Kerry, the girl next in the chain, wrapped them in neat paper bundles and added the fries; they at least were real. The entire operation from order to delivery took sixty seconds. The very definition of fast food.

He glanced through the serving hatch as three familiar figures entered and headed for a corner table that had just become vacant. Theo took off his apron and tossed it to Kerry.

‘I’m going on my break.’

He hurried from the kitchen before she could object.

‘Hey! Morons!’ Theo said, extending his arms in welcome to the newcomers.

Milton and Clemmie treated him to a subtle nod of the head in reciprocation.

Baxter glanced at his wrist, where his never-worn smartwatch would have been.

‘Twenty seconds and the insults are already flying. What kind of welcome is this for your mates?’

Theo sat on the thin wedge of exposed bench Clemmie had left vacant, and tried to ignore the warmth of her thigh.

‘Mates who are only here to eat using my free vouchers – of which I have none left, by the way.’

Baxter slapped his palms on the table.

‘Then that’s me out. I’m not paying to eat this rubbish.’

Theo ignored him. ‘That was such a dick move you pulled in the game.’

He shoved Baxter’s arm off the table. Unlike their avatars in the game they were the same height, but Theo’s slight frame was far less intimidating. Still, they’d known each other since primary school – seen one another grow, jump at shadows and vomit in sandpits – so there was zero Baxter could do to intimidate him.

Baxter caught Milton’s eye and automatically targeted him instead. His shapeless mass of auburn hair, gangly build and nervous reflexes marked him as the card-carrying nerd he was.

Baxter stabbed a finger in Milton’s direction.

‘Because that wanker led us into the crater, and he even lost his weapon. What the hell are you good for, mate?’

‘I meant all of you!’ snapped Theo.

He looked between the scowling boys. Only Clemmie was uninterested, toying with her olive-green military satchel bedecked with characters copied from popular games and movies. She had a passion for the antique classics: Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Space Invaders …

‘You all ditched me!’

Clemmie gave a loud, deliberate snort. ‘You were going to die anyway, rushing in like that. And we were seconds away from ejection.’

She slid her rig from the satchel and put it on. Wearing headsets in public was as ubiquitous as glasses or shades, so nobody would give her a second glance. The device instantly activated in AR – augmented reality – mode, allowing her to see the world around her as high-definition lasers projected social media feeds on to the transparent curved glass visor, seamlessly blending them with reality.

AR was considered safe, so wasn’t subject to the same time constrains that SPACE immersion was. Without the emotional link, the psychological and physical toll couldn’t mess you up, but its scope was limited to real-world interaction. Even so, Clemmie’s attention was already lost online.

Theo looked obliquely at her, willing his temper to maintain boiling point, but instead it evaporated. The fringe of Clemmie’s bobbed black hair clung to her sweaty brow, framing her perfectly fused Pakistani and Middle Eastern ancestry. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes flickered across the images reflected on the visor.

‘Face facts, we all cocked up,’ she sighed in a distracted tone.

Theo held up his finger and thumb a fraction apart.

‘I was this close to the orb.’ He shot a look at Baxter. ‘Until this dickhead tripped me.’

‘What does that matter?’ Milton shrugged. ‘We died, which means we go back to the beginning, folks. We failed level one. Level one – do you know how sad that is for somebody like me?’

Nobody wanted to admit it, but he was right. They had been playing the new Avasta module for months as a team – or, as Milton often commented, as a collection of individuals who happened to be heading to the same place.

The early part of the level had many save points so players could enjoy a feeling of rapid progress, but as the game continued such safety anchors grew steadily further apart, providing just enough content for players to stretch the statutory daily limit.

‘How did we eat up all that time?’ Theo asked, in a deliberate move to assuage everybody’s irritation. With the group’s limited attention spans, it was an easy task to accomplish.

Milton counted on his fingers. ‘We played past midnight last night. That was over an hour. Then this morning Captain Can’t Wait –’ he jerked his head towards Theo – ‘said we should make a push for the orb so we ended up in that jungle hellhole.’

It all totalled up to ensure none of them could enter SPACE again for another twenty-four hours.

‘You guys want to reconvene at mine tomorrow night?’ said Theo, hoping that Clemmie at least would agree. ‘I’ve got another shift here and Baxter’s got his … thing.’

‘Yours? I dunno, mate. I’m allergic to the smell of your mum’s vape and booze,’ Baxter sneered.

Theo pulled a face, but couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm to defend something so deeply rooted in fact.

‘Clem?’

Clemmie gave a shrug. ‘Maybe. But forget Avasta? I’d rather just hang in SPACE.’

Milton shrugged. ‘I’ve got nothing better to do.’

Like Clemmie and Baxter, Milton was on summer break from uni, the only time the four of them were able to enjoy time together in the flesh. But the reality was they had all drifted apart since leaving college and these days tended to see more of each other virtually than in the flesh.

Theo nodded, glancing around the increasingly busy restaurant. It was easy to see why SPACE was a lure to avoid reality. He often fantasised about staying in the virtual world to live out the rest of his life in hedonistic escapism. Who would want reality when it looked like this?







Chapter Three



Theo rolled his thumb in a small circle between his eyebrows, attempting to knead the growing pain away. After his shift in Synger his migraine had crept back and wasn’t helped by the thrashing rock music blaring from the living room, which punched his ears the moment he opened the front door.

‘Christ … Mum?’ he called out. ‘Mum?’

The living room door was closed and he wanted nothing more than to go straight to bed. He stepped into his bedroom and tossed his bag into the corner. He took off his rig and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand as he debated whether to try to ride out the noise. He glanced at the peeling posters covering every inch of wall space: his favourite films and bands, many of which had been up for a decade, from the original Avasta to Star Trek: The Final Generation.

It was time for a change of taste, he thought, rather than cling on to his youth. Maybe Clemmie was right about the game. Was twenty too old? Why did reality have a way of sharpening its claws on your aspirations and pleasures? He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, as pain ping-ponged between his temples.

Like most kids, when he’d first experienced SPACE Theo had pushed the boundaries, and in those days automatic ejection hadn’t yet been implemented. He had developed persistent migraines, one of the small percentage of Spacers who experienced prolonged side effects. He blamed his mum, of course. She was irresponsible and he shouldn’t have been left alone at such a delicate age, but he supposed she had to work to support them both. He reasoned that head pain was better than suffering the other side effects of prolonged exposure: a crippling cerebral haemorrhage accompanied by a painful death, or – best case – permanent, crippling nerve damage known colloquially as Lag.

Lag was particularly unpleasant. A weird drunken feeling of wanting to move while your virtual body refused to, only for it to unexpectedly do so moments later when you’d already given up on the action, resulting in zero co-ordination and painful conflicting signals fizzling the brain’s neural pathways. Worse, it was caused by the wetware interface between the machine and the mind effectively filing down the motor neurons controlling movement, so that the lag sensation was replicated in the real world and often led to paralysis.

‘Ella!’ Theo yelled over the music, the sound of his own voice rattling further shocks of pain around his skull. ‘Can you turn it down? I need to sleep!’ There was no response. ‘For Christ’s sake, Mum! Turn it down!’

He gently scratched the etched metallic silver winking emoji on his rig’s stem, tracing its comical lolling tongue. It was the logo for Emotive, the megacorporation that had, with the help of international governments, created SPACE. They had pioneered the interface that finally bridged the gap between the virtual and the emotional: Emo-tech.

James Lewinsky, the genius behind Emotive, pioneered affective computing from beyond the usual artificial emotions and machine learning to generating genuine artificial emotions and feeding them back to users: SPecially Adaptive Chemical Emotions.

That had started the SPACE revolution.

Even with photorealistic graphics, projected directly on to the retina by high-def lasers, there was still an uncanny valley between the physical and virtual worlds. Lewinsky had realised that the emotional connection the virtual world lacked had been hiding in plain sight for decades.

Emoticons.

Tagged at the end of messages to perk up dry text and convey an extra layer of meaning, emoji evolved from faces to items – cake, clapperboards, pizza, intimidatingly large aubergines – anything that would generate an emotional response from the reader. Within a few years, it had become the fastest growing language in history. Then emoji development had stalled – animation, audio, each a step in the wrong direction, nothing more than baubles to a fledgling language.

Emoji had to evolve to survive, and Lewinsky had done it with his revolutionary mobile phones. The early bio-interfaces were small touchpads on the handset that went beyond boring haptics and transferred people’s emotions by stimulating chemical reactions in the end user’s amygdala. Now text messages could be sent, read, and felt. It was an exciting new experience. In a text declaring undying love, you could feel it. The sorrow of bad news, the elation of a newborn baby – the emotions were muted, but you could sense them all.

Lewinsky knew that to deliver the mother lode he would have to plug straight into the brain. That’s when the headset’s wetware interface came into its own. Lewinsky soon realised that if the brain could be stimulated with emotions, the same techniques could trick the brain into feeling objects that were not there. Out went cumbersome haptic bodysuits and tactile gloves. Now skin could be made to sense textures and heat. Even smells could be simulated.

Creators became ever more inventive. A virtual BASE jump from a skyscraper was now accompanied by the full emotional package, shortened by the impatient to pax: trepidation; the zero-g stomach roll during free fall; the wind against the face; the fear of the chute not opening; the sudden physical wrench as it did and the bone-jarring impact of a high-speed landing. With flawless graphics, the experience could then be ramped up to a space dive from a suborbital platform, tearing apart Baumgartner’s and Eustace’s records.

Thus, SPACE was born and Jean Baudrillard’s hyperreality became true. More real than real, as Emotive’s motto bragged.

Of course, in the early days, the system was abused. People would spend days – sometimes weeks – in SPACE, which led to psychosis. Deaths followed. The global economy began to suffer. Just as mankind was finally gaining control of the environmental nightmare crippling the planet, people once again turned their backs on it.

Ever the visionary, James Lewinsky ensured that while SPACE was free, it was also regulated. The amount of pain a user could experience virtually was limited by the System, instantly slashing cybersuicide numbers that had plagued early versions and led human rights groups to try to boycott all virtual reality.

The compulsory time limit was implemented to prevent permanent brain and nerve damage. Now people had a reason to go back outside, exercise and ensure the real world functioned. It was a small price to pay for fragments of total escapism every day.

Theo carefully tossed his rig onto his bed. The Sony device was durable enough to take knocks and spills – even designed to be thrown against the wall in frustration – but he couldn’t afford a replacement just in case something did happen.

‘For God’s sake!’

He strode down the narrow corridor that was the nexus of his flat, all white plastic walls cast in shadows by several blown light bulbs they had been unable to replace.

He heaved the living room door open. The room beyond was bathed in darkness. Theo considered shouting again but the music would just drown him out. Increasingly pissed off with each stride, he was about to shove the door open when something caught his attention – a noise barely audible below the music. Sobbing, maybe?

He hesitated for a moment. He knew how volatile his mum could be, and if his migraine wasn’t slam-dancing through his cranium then he would have turned around and left her to it rather than waste time arguing in person. He sucked in a deep breath then gently shoved the door wide open, allowing the light from the corridor in.

The small living room was decorated, if that was the right word, with a wooden table they had found in a second-hand shop and which his mother had attempted to paint with vivid colours and all the skill of a six-year-old. The two mismatched threadbare sofas had been inherited third-hand from cousins. A potted yucca sat in the corner, its leaves brittle and brown – a sure-fire candidate for cruelty against plants. A rusting radiator half-hung from a wall, with an ancient 4K television above it, the casing cracked and the display washed out after being forced to stream TV shows years beyond its operable shelf life.

Ella sat on the floor, leaning against the arm of a couch, almost hidden in a veil of vape smoke. Her legs were splayed out before her in too-tight tracksuit bottoms, and her crop top revealed a small tiger paw print tattoo peeking just above her waistband. Her long black hair was pulled up into a ponytail, but wayward strands hung in front of her bloodshot eyes. A half-empty gin bottle had toppled over next to her bare foot, the clear liquid still dribbling onto the threadbare carpet.

‘Mum …’

He wanted to stay angry, to make a point that he shouldn’t be the adult in this scenario, but as her body shook with each deep sob his anger at her transformed to pity. He snapped at the hub entertainment system embedded in the wall.

‘Freya, shut the bloody music off!’

Ella’s head snapped up as the music stopped, and she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands as if pretending all was fine.

‘Theo? I was workin’. What did I tell you about not comin’ in here when I’m workin’?’

Despite over two decades in London, her West Country lilt still infused every word. Through the smoke she regarded him with bloodshot eyes.

Theo stared at her battered rig cast aside on the floor. He carefully placed it on the table before sitting on the sofa. He avoided her gaze as she clambered unsteadily to her feet, before losing her balance and flopping down next to him.

‘I was the one working.’ He indicated to the gin bottle. ‘Unless you’re getting hammered at work again?’

The instant the words were out he regretted them. He wasn’t in the mood for an argument. His eyes fell to the lone personal item she hadn’t sold over the years, a framed certificate on the wall. Time had faded the paper behind the grubby glass, but the words EMIV Diploma – Level 2, were still visible. A testament that even she had once had ambitions, whatever they were.

With a trembling hand, Ella took a drag on her e-cigarette. Theo wafted the smoke away.

‘Do you really have to do that in here?’

‘You’re like your father – such a killjoy,’ Ella said with a sniff, but she switched the device off and they lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.

Theo felt awkward talking to his mother about anything that slewed towards the personal. It wasn’t something they had really done over the years; it wasn’t natural.

She’d had him when she was only fifteen, so he figured he’d inherited her emotional immaturity. He knew he was overly harsh on her, expecting too much. On the rare times she had turned up to parents’ evening when he was in school, Theo had had the ignominy of watching various members of staff flirt with her; even fellow pupils assumed she was his older sister. On the plus side, it often meant they gave him better grades than his abilities bore out.

Despite his grievances, Ella had done everything she could to ensure they had a roof over their heads, food in the cupboards, and enough money to keep them in SPACE tech, so they could at least function like normal people. Access to SPACE might now be considered a fundamental human right by most nations, but having the required equipment certainly wasn’t. Once you stepped outside the tech bubble, you ended up in a stratum of society that was sliding backwards. Being unable to afford to ascend into SPACE meant that entire sections of privilege would be forever beyond your reach.

Theo massaged the bridge of his nose and lowered his voice.

‘Why are you crying, Mum?’

‘Just a bad day, love.’ She didn’t want to meet his questioning look. Her lips pursed as she considered saying something more, but she decided against it. ‘I got kicked off the Conservation.’

Theo fought back the urge to shout. The last thing she needed right now was him being a prick.

The Conservations were huge rooftop parks, linked together by a colossal network of motorway-sized bridges of nothing but wild countryside. Entire forests were suspended hundreds of feet over the city, connecting the more traditional earthbound parks together, cladding London in a green leafy shield. The Parkways provided not only a giant carbon dioxide sponge, but fertile soil to grow crops and flowering meadows that had bolstered the declining populations of pollinating insects. They spanned for miles, providing refuge for badgers, hedgehogs, foxes and deer that had become permanent inner-city high wire residents.

The last time he’d paid attention, his mother was working in an apiary and he couldn’t imagine how it was possible to get sacked from that. It was best not to ask.

Ella stood up, swayed unsteadily, and swept a disapproving gaze around the flat.

‘And Christ knows we need t. . .