Annabel Scheme (6 page)

“Well, I can’t explain it,” Jack Zapp said, “but it stuck in my head. We made it to California and Neri walked off the train carrying those blueprints like sacred scrolls. I headed back to St. Louis, but the thrill of it was gone. It was like Neri moved the magnet, and now I was the one being drawn.

“So I stepped off the train—it was August 8, 1879—and I shook the hand of the Pacific Railroad’s man in Alameda, collected my pay, and hopped a ferry to San Francisco. It was the first time my feet had touched ground in three years.”

This was the first time my feet had
ever
touched ground. Sure, simulated feet, simulated ground, but I’d take it.

“In the city, I asked a man to point me to Russian Hill, and I headed straight for it. Couldn’t stop for anything; I was like a man possessed. Finally, I took a cable car up into the fog—it was summertime—and when I got to the top, oh, you should have seen it.”

Jack Zapp stopped again, and stretched his arms even wider, as if presenting a panorama: “The lights were floating like a crown. Neri had done his work. Electric streetlights, all in a ring. It felt like the promised land. In that moment I knew I’d never return to the train. This was a new life. So I took out a nickel, the last of Jackman’s second chances, gave it a toss”—he pantomimed this—“and chose a new name for myself. Jack Zapp.”

There was a commotion in the street. The crowd ahead was stirring and seething; another moment, and I saw the reason. A middle-aged woman was crossing the plaza.

It was Mary.

I knew this because she looked like every painting of Mary ever made, all mashed-up and multiplied. Huge concentric halos radiated out from her face at perpendicular angles. Swirls of lights swept the street clear in front of her, and her footprints glowed gold behind her. An honor guard of half-transparent angels hovered around her in a box formation, hoisting harps and flaming swords.

At first she was just gazing beatifically forward, but then her head rocked slowly to one side, and her eyes swept across the crowd, and caught mine.

She was a computer program. She had to be. They wouldn’t let anyone play Mary. In World of Jesus, you were a baker or a fish-monger, not John or Judas. But that was a powerful gaze for a computer program. There were more polygons in Mary’s eyes than the rest of the plaza combined. I felt my processors burning. I glanced to the ground, and when I looked back, she had moved on, and the crowd was filling in the space she’d left behind.

“Don’t dawdle, Miss Nineteen,” Jack Zapp called back to me. “The Pool of Siloam awaits!”

We’d been walking for what felt like miles when I remembered that I could speak.

“Mr. Zapp,” I said—making my voice soft and trying to hold the computery modulation at bay—“what did you do after that?”

“Why, Miss Nineteen, I found a job,” he said. “Many jobs. I drove a milk cart. I ran a cable car. But I had my eye on electrification. Now, I knew I didn’t have it in me to be an engineer like Neri. I drank with him every Tuesday at the White Fang. Picked his brain, but there was just too much brain to pick.

“Then, one night, Neri told me a story. An old widow living up on Russian Hill, she’d had the electric lights installed, and when she turned them on, she heard her dead husband whispering:

“Elaine.
Elaiiine
.

“Sometimes you settle for a profession. Sometimes you reach for a profession. And sometimes, Miss Nineteen, you create a profession where none existed before.”

“I know just what you mean,” I said. “So what did you do?”

It was Jack Zapp and me walking in front now, with Scheme trailing behind; the three of us made an increasingly acute triangle.

“Why, I became the world’s first Electric Detective!”

I laughed. Jack Zapp’s enthusiasm was infectious. This had all happened more than a hundred years ago, and he was still so proud of himself.

“I found Elaine Fitzgerald’s house—it was dark, as she’d grown weary of the moaning and groaning—and I knocked on her front door and offered my services. By way of demonstration, she lit those electric lights, and sure enough, I heard it, too. A far-off voice saying: Elaine. Elaine. Elaine.

“I might add that Elaine Fitzgerald was not as old a widow as I had imagined. She was a lovely woman. And I gave her my pledge that I would not rest until her case was solved.”

“What then?”

“Well, I thought I should pay old Mr. Fitzgerald a visit. He was buried in a cemetery not far from the house, just down the slope of the hill. And do you know what I saw there?”

“Fresh earth above his grave?” I said. Just a guess.

“No, Miss Nineteen. The transmission line. It ran right up alongside the cemetery. Mr. Fitzgerald saw a way home, and he hopped aboard.”

Wow. The first internet.

“So, Elaine—Mrs. Fitzgerald—dug him up and moved him to the new graveyard over in the Presidio, and she heard not a peep thereafter. That was my first case.”

“Did you have many after that?”

“Dozens!” Jack Zapp said. “Hundreds. I developed a theory, Jack Zapp’s Theory of Electro-Phanto-Dynamics, backed it up with Jack Zapp’s Restless Pledge, and offered my services to clients in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and once, New York City.”

“How did you—” I trailed off. I didn’t know how to say it.

“How did I end up like this, you mean to ask,” Jack Zapp said. He frowned, and his mustache drooped lower. “Miss Nineteen, I will speak plainly.” He paused. “I bit off more than I could chew.”

The streets were all sloping down in the same direction now, dropping towards the corner of the city and, I imagined, the Pool of Siloam. For a moment, as Jack Zapp was telling his graveyard tale, I had the sense we were being followed. But I couldn’t see everywhere at once anymore, and when I turned my head, there was nothing.

“It was a demon in a dynamo,” Jack Zapp said. “One of Tesla’s new machines on Mission Street. Absolutely remarkable. Big as a house. Except it wouldn’t run. So naturally, the chairman of the board of Pacific Gas and Electric called on Jack Zapp, the Electric Detective, and I gave him my pledge...” His voice softened a bit. “And I failed. I crept into the station with my bifocal phanto-glass, and I saw it there—a dark shadowed thing with long arms and a face like a man. It was cradling the machine like a lover. But that’s about all I can tell you, because as soon as we locked eyes, I was cooked. Electrocuted—though wether by Tesla's forces or some darker cousin, I can't say. It was all dark fog for a long time, and then a lighter fog—and next I knew, I was walking the Embarcadero again. And now,” he said, “I intend to resume my investigation.”

Here, Jack Zapp paused and leveled his eyes at me. Brown eyes.

“I can sense something about you, Miss Nineteen. You understand my situation in a way that Miss Scheme does not.”

“I think I do,” I said, nodding.

“And we both find this place rather congenial, don’t we?”

The street was empty. I’d just noticed. Jerusalem’s banal bustle had broken down. Where did everybody go? Had the Sermon on the Mount started somewhere?

Two stars fell out of the sky.

UNESCAPED

They were angels, half-transparent like Mary’s escort, but not so taciturn. They streaked down out of the blue bowl and hit the ground like paratroopers, bright wings ballooned out behind them. These were assault angels.

There were no words and no warnings. They just began to hack at Jack Zapp, making bits of textured polygon fly and stick to the street and the stone walls. Little triangular flecks of suit and skin.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Stop!”

Jack Zapp was bent over and their flaming swords were falling across his back. These angels were programs like Mary, I could tell. It was code vs. ghost, and I was rooting for the ghost. He reached up to grab at one of the angel’s robes. It cut off his hand.

I was at the edge of the street, pressed up against a wall, half-hidden in shadows; I’d fled without realizing it.

Scheme was standing firm. She took a step forward. The angels turned, paused just a moment—then descended on her. The air was crosshatched with pale fire. She fell, and I saw blood, pure bright red, #FF0000 red.

“Scheme?” I whispered, then shouted, as if to wake her: “Scheme!” I wasn’t used to shouting, and I wasn’t used to being on my own, and I wasn’t used to Scheme being anything less than omnipotent. Everything about this was terrifying. I thought about logging out.

Then there was someone else in the street. The angels swiveled, slowly, to face a looming centurion with dark brown skin and cartoon-scale muscles. But he worked as swiftly as they did; he took a single galloping step forward and pushed his sword through the nearest angel’s body. It exploded in a spray of see-through pieces, like a popped balloon.

You’re not supposed to be able to do that in World of Jesus.

The centurion took another giant stride and pulled his sword across the second angel’s body. Another explosion; the pieces fell like confetti.

The centurion’s chest rose and fell in measured simulations of breath. He was truly gigantic. He had a crimson cape and a circular shield marked with a double eagle, but both looked comically small attached to his bulk. He spoke.

“Are you okay, Hu?”

The voice. It was Scheme!

“Those angels just attacked us out of nowhere,” I said. “They—where’s Jack Zapp?”

There was just a smear of texture in the street where he’d been.

“He got banned,” Scheme said. “Brutally. World of Jesus strikes without remorse if it decides you’re a bot.”

I looked up at the centurion, then down at Scheme’s other body, swimming in a small lake of Nintendo-red blood. “How did you…”

“That wasn’t me. It was Yung-fa in Guangdong. Just a precaution—against Jack Zapp, actually. Maybe I was wrong about him.”

“That sword…”

“Unescaped code. Very rare,” she said, sliding it back into its sheath, “and very expensive. Where was Jack Zapp taking us?”

“The Pool of Siloam. I think it’s this way.” I stepped out away from the wall, back into the sunlight, and pointed down the slope of the street. Scheme’s centurion looked me up and down.

“Nice dress,” she said. It now had a stain of triangles splashed across the skirt. “Although it's not how I imagine you.”

“You think of me as male?”

“Not exactly,” Scheme said. Her centurion smiled. Giant white teeth. She turned and set off down the street in huge loping strides.

She called back to me: “In my imagination, you’re a cat.”

THE POOL OF SILOAM

The Pool of Siloam was a wide rectangle of dark green water that rippled and reflected the sun in little curls of white fire. Broad, shallow steps led up from the pool into a sprawling terrace that was jam-packed with carts and tents and people all shouting and haggling.

I followed close behind Scheme’s centurion. There, near the pool, tucked under the shade of an olive tree—it was obviously our destination.

We knew that, in World of Jesus, Fadi Azer inhabited a character also named Fadi. What we did not know was that, in World of Jesus, Fadi’s character also sold falafel. The cart’s wooden sign said FALAFEL KING. Wow.

“Excuse me,” Scheme said to the cart’s attendant. He was the default character; he looked completely generic, like a hundred people we’d passed on the way here. Same face, same clothes.

“We’re looking for Fadi.”

“That is me,” the default character said. “I am Fadi. You want some falafel?”

Well.

“You’re Fadi,” Scheme repeated, “from the falafel shop in Fog City.”

“We are supposed to be role-playing,” Fadi frowned, and glanced around, as if there might be role-playing police patrolling the terrace. But then, in spite of himself, he smiled. “You know my shop? You are a customer?”

“I visited two days ago,” Scheme said. “I’m Annabel Scheme, the investigator.”

“Yes, of course! I am happy to see you,” Fadi said. He seemed unfazed by Scheme’s new skin. “I was worried about you after the police came. I did not know you played World of Jesus. You should have told me! I serve the Falafel King there, I serve the Falafel King here. You have not been getting falafel in Jerusalem from someone else, have you?”

“Fadi, where
are
you right now?”

“Easy. We are at the Pool of Siloam, great place to sell falafel, because—”

“No, I mean really—in the real world—where are you?”

“At the shop,” Fadi said. His voice was suddenly crackly, like a transmission from far away. “At my computer. It is a very good computer; Jad helped me build it, and I purchased a very fast—”

“Fadi,” Scheme interrupted, “I want you to really think, and be honest: Are you sure that’s where you are right now?”

He hesitated.

“No.” There was more static in his voice. “I am not sure of that.”

“So you’re not sure where you are,” Scheme said.

“No.”

There was a silence. I wished I could still whisper in Scheme’s ear, because I wanted to say:
He’s dead, isn’t he.

“Well, listen,” Scheme said. “I’ll take two falafel.”

Fadi brightened and ran through a well-rendered simulation of falafel preparation. The oil actually bubbled and spat, and little bits of 3D chickpea floated to the surface.

“What’s the last thing you can remember doing,” Scheme asked, carefully casual, “back in Fog City?”

“Yesterday, I talk to Jad,” Fadi said. His voice was clearer now. “He is going to get me into the Grail-mail beta program, pretty cool. The man with the mustache stop by, doesn't say much, like always. Police come to the shop. Order some falafel, ask me some questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Oh, do I know this girl, such-and-such, brown hair.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, of course! Jenny from the building. Too skinny. Should eat more falafel.”

“What then?”

“Nothing. I close up, come here for a while. Then sleep, then I open the shop again, start mixing the falafel. Then, a big order! A delivery order. Biggest delivery ever.”

“Who ordered it? Where did you go?”

“Ha, where else? Only one place to go in Fog City!” Fadi beamed a smile at us. “Big delivery for Grail.”