Gary Preston won’t be coming with us to Paris, instead I have the pretty pathologist Dr Sally Fell as my companion. The night after the autopsy, we both go to stay at his house in Hampstead and he treats us to a fine dinner with French wine to get us in the mood. I sleep heavily until around five a.m. when I am woken by a strange dream about a man in my house looking for me with a pack of cards on his hand. After that, I can’t settle.
When I hear movement downstairs, I haul myself out of the crisp white sheets of my bed and stumble into the shower. Downstairs, in the light an airy kitchen, I have kippers for breakfast, sitting opposite Sally who is beautifully tousled after her own shower. She doesn’t say much, just eats her muesli. Preston is there to show us in, then disappears who knows where, to come back just as I am polishing off my last kipper and mopping up the tomato sauce with brown bread.
‘Ready?’ he says.
‘Ish,’ I say with a grin. My brain itches as I say the word as if it has been listening to me. Thekind of itch you can’t scratch — mainly because it’s right in the middle of your brain.
Sally nods, finishing her muesli. She’s been silent as we sit at the breakfast table. So much so that I thought she was rude, or don’t like me or something, but now I realised that her silence is due, not to rudeness, but to fear. I could ask her what she fears, but it’s obvious.
Eating done, Preston shows us through from the kitchen, down a bright, neatly painted passage and down a half flight of steps into a room that has maybe been a big pantry when the house was built in the 1800s. Laid out in the room, are top of the range VR rigs with brand new versions of the Miskatonic ™ Neural Nets. Preston points and I lie down on the mesh bed, designed to minimise pressure damage when the player is lying down a long time. The haptic suits are a thing of the past, the Dreamland Inducer tablets meant the VR experience is all in the mind — a game in a dream, but “realer than real”.
Gary gestured. ‘When you log in, make your way to Croydon Airport.’
I nod at Sally. ‘How will I recognise you?’
She gives a tense grin, trying to overcome her nerves, I guess. She says, ‘I’ll be wearing a red rose in my lapel.’
‘Really?’
She laughs. ‘I’ll try to find one.’
Now the talking is over and the nerves are building up in the room, I lie on the mesh bed and put on the neural net. The itching in my head grows stronger and I scratch uselessly at the scalp. Preston smiles even though it isn’t funny. He says, ‘And that’s why we’re doing it.’
‘The itch in my head?’
‘The itch in everyone’s head. It’s not an option to do nothing.’
‘I know.’
A pause. ‘Are you scared?’
‘Not so much.’ Truth is, I don’t feel scared inside: more numb now. I don’t know what to expect.
He raises an eyebrow. ‘You’re about the face the Great Old Ones and you’re not scared?’
I’m too lacking in imagination to be scared.’
He studies me to see if I am joking, then he must think I am because he laughs out loud. ‘Good man. I’m glad you’re on my side.’
I’m not comfortable. I squirm on the mesh bed. ‘Where are the tablets?’
He indicates with a quiet point of his finger. There’s a steel beaker sitting in a recess on a shelf to my left, attached to the mesh bed. In the beaker are six or seven Miskatonic ™ Dreamland Inducer tablets. I’ll only need one for this trip; so it seems Preston is planning we return a few times. As it sinks in, I don’t know whether to be reassured or unnerved by that.
I try to ground myself. The numbness fading into disquiet. I look around before I reach for the tablets. The room is pleasantly warm, but not too hot. It smells clean, if it smells of anything. Preston stands back and watched us. He doesn’t seem to see any further need to chat in his expensive suit and leather loafers. I shrug, take the shiny white pill from the beaker and feel its smoothness between my finger and thumb and with a second’s hesitation, pop it into my mouth. It tastes vaguely sweet, sugar-coated.
I slip on the goggles. The room fades; the pictures in front of my eyes get brighter. First the logo then the graphics and the loading music until that too fades and I materialise on Hampstead Heath, sitting on the bench on Parliament Hill from where Preston and I watched the Old Gods dance over the City of London.
It’s a bright day, some cloud high up and a breeze from the south that brings the smell of old leaves with it. Damn clever how they do the smell.
I take a minute to orientate myself. I am back in Darkworlds. An alert pings on my HUD and when I check it, it is from Preston’s in-game avatar, the Level 20 Paladin, Guy Philby. It reads:
Check with the Strand Branch of Coutts & Co. We’ve put money in your account.
I have a shilling or so in change in my pocket, and I get a ticket into central London to check out my newfound wealth. I still can’t get over the detail of Darkworlds. The NPCs look real. They chatter like real people, and, as I stand hanging on the leather strap as the tube train jolts underground, I hear snatches of their conversation:
‘So, I say to him…’
‘Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is.’
‘What you get married for if you don’t want children?’
‘You ought to be ashamed, to look so antique.’
And I recognise the lines from Eliot’s Wasteland. Brilliant, old Miskatonic. Next thing we’ll be hearing lines from Ezra Pound.
The Tube train stops at Charing Cross and I get off before the doors slide shut again and take me somewhere I don’t want to go. I make my way across along the platform among rain coated men andgabardined women, all with hats, some smoking stinking Woodbines, others aromatic Turkish tobacco. Then at a knot of people where I have to wait while they stride up the tiled steps, a man, short, dark-haired, Trilby-hatted with a sinewy brow, turns, looks me in the eye and says, ‘The apparition of these faces in the crowd. Petals on a wet, black bough.’
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Then he turns and vanishes into the crowd. My heart hammers because the game is listening to me. Somehow, it’s got inside my head and read my thoughts about Ezra Pound then it made them real.
The quote is definitely from Pound’s In a Station of the Metro. Appallingly appropriate too. I know the game is inside me; I saw the wet silk strands of protein weaving through a dead stranger’s brain and I know from the itch they are inside mine too, breeding insidiously, growing, sticking their tendrils into my thoughts. Darkworlds is watching me.
I stand with computer-generated men and women shoving me until my shock passes and I joined the flow. The ecology of Darkworlds is full of a seething mass of intelligence and personalities. Firstly, or maybe actually way down the list of importance, is us, the players. We live in real bodies and enter Darkworlds by way of neural nets and psychedelic tablets.
Other intelligences never leave this place. These are the NPCs. Some are fixed, others move around a circumscribed route.
Then there are the monsters, who knows what they are? And above them, with varying levels of sentience are those sections of code that have become alive and have power over all the rest of us that inhabit this space.
They are our gods. Some are idiots, some are geniuses, but our lives and our sanity are in their power.
And every intelligence in Darkworlds, from mine to Azathoth to the very NPC train guard wants something. That’s what we have in common. Desire.
As I walked, I wonder about the game itself. Is it a thing? Does the game as a whole have a personality? Is it this personality that is playing games with me, quoting lines of poetry? Jesus Christ, that’s scary. I shudder, but truth is I don’t know.
Anyway, I have a job to do and I can’t get side-tracked. I’ve got to get to Paris, but first to Croydon Airport.
I exit Charing Cross Station, past a replica of the Edward I’s Charing Cross monument. As I get close to the column, I can’t resist touching it and feel the warm, rough stone, apparently a thousand years old under my hand, except not.
I take a second there where the throng isn’t as thick and I check my map. On the HUD, I search for Coutts & Co, and soon there’s a little red point blinking and a gold trail of dots that leads off to my right.
I follow the trail of golden breadcrumbs and just avoid getting killed by a red double-decker London bus and as I scoot of the way, a black taxi-cab honks the rubber bulb of his horn in indignation.
But then I’m at Coutts. I walk up to the front desk and a man in a morning suit lifts his chin in greeting. ‘Good morning, reverend.’
I almost forgot I am a vicar in the game and I’m wearing a clerical collar over a black shirt. I study the man who’s watching me, unsmiling and unspeaking. I know he’s an NPC, but they’ve modelled the disdain just right. Here I am in my stained raincoat with a bulge under both shoulders where I have both my Browning and my Walther PKK holstered.
‘I’d like to check my account, please,’ I say.
He nods, still without cracking a smile. ‘Can I ask your name, sir?’
‘Adam Cadmon.’ I spell it with a C. To those with a more occult frame of mind, I might have given my name with a K: Adam Kadmon — the Kabbalistic First Man. The NPC goes into the back, leaving me standing there at the dark oak corner. The computer humanity of London streams along the Strand outside behind me through the pleats-glass window.
He came back with a little slip of paper on which is written, in neat copper-pleats handwriting the figure: £2,000. Now that is a ton of money in 1927. All my money worries are over. Iarrange to withdraw £200 and get it as two £50 notes and the rest in big white fivers. I nod and smile, happy despite him acting as if I’m an interloper. Then I am back on the Strand.
I consult my HUD again to see that trains to Croydon start from London Victoria. That’s a bit of a walk but because I’m loaded, I hail a taxi. I get in and close the door and the two-stroke engine has a pleasant thrumming sound as we motor west and south, through Trafalgar Square, then past Buckingham Palace until my driver stops outside the station.
I give him a big tip from my change. I know he’s only an NPC, but my tip makes him smile. An intelligent NPC then.
I stroll into the station, smoky with steam and the smell of burning coal. There are lots of people here too and shops. Men stand selling newspapers, shouting out the headlines shouting above the hissing of steam trains. The Soviets have executed some British subjects for spying, a Pole shot the Russian ambassador. I guess the news is accurate.Darkworlds is always accurate.
I check the posters with the timetables. I have fifteen minutes before the Croydon train so I wander around the station and find, of all things, an Occult Supplies shop. Hard to believe the real 1920s Victoria Station has a Lovecraft style occult store. And the shop next to it is a gun store. Again, unlikely, but this is a role-playing game after all.
I step into the gun shop. I need some ammunition so I buy two boxes of 9mm bullets from the mutton-chopped shopkeeper, who looks like a refugee from Victorian times who would prefer to be spending his time shooting grouse in the Highlands. Then I see that as well as the normal lead tipped bullets, he has a notice advertising silver bullets. I raise an eyebrows. ‘Silver bullets?’
‘Popular among lycanthrope hunters,’ he says drily.
‘Really? Do you get many lycanthrope hunters?’
He nods. ‘Regularly.’ He twists his mouth. ‘Some say they are also useful against vampires, but myself I’d prefer a stake.’ He looks at me knowingly. ‘We have stakes.’
I smile awkwardly. ‘No, but I’ll take a box of silver bullets. You never know.’
He wags his finger at me with a laugh. ‘You never know, sir. Never indeed.’
After I buy my bullets, it’s time for the train. I sit in the Pullman carriage and after a minute, There’s a bump, whistle and the indecipherable shout of the guard and the train moves off. We chuff our way through the dirty backstreets of South London and I settle down for the journey to Croydon, which my HUD told me is just over nine miles.
I zone out and check my character sheet while we travel:
Name: Adam Cadmon
Profession: Anglican Priest
Address: No Fixed Abode
Level 9
Guild: Ordo Lux Lucis
Available Skill Points: 100
HEALTH 900/900
MANA 900/900
SANITY 100/100
REPUTATION 15/100
Skills
Diplomacy 45
Persuade 15
Seduction 2
Intimidation 3
Empathy 45
Latin 60
Greek 45
Hebrew 20
German 25
Religious Lore 90
Ritual 40
First Aid 30
Drive Car 30
Pistols 50
Rifles 20
Clairvoyance 25
Alchemy 410
I need to spend those hundred skill points.
And then we pull into Croydon Station. The train stops and everyone get off. A green and white bus sits outside with Croydon Airport up as its destination. The destination name is printed in white on a roll of fabric that the driver shifted round depending on where he’s headed. The journey doesn’t take long and soon I am by the low building that is both waiting room and customs post and border control. Propeller powered aeroplanes hurtle along the railway before lifting laboriously into the cloudy sky. They don’t look very safe. I step off the bus and walk into the building and find the Imperial Airlines desk. A handsome, lantern jawed man in a blue uniform sits there waiting for me.
‘Ticket to Paris please,’ I say.
‘Return?’
I haven’t thought of that. ‘Single, for now, please.’
‘Of course, sir. Will you be wanting to travel on our new Silver Wing service?’
‘Silver Wing?’
‘Yes, sir. Just started last month. It is true first class travel in the air. We have a chef on board and the menu is totally a la carte.’
I scratch my head. ‘How long is the flight?’
‘Two hours, thirty minutes, sir. You will be in the very modern and reliable Armstrong-Whitworth Argosy aeroplane. It’s the very best.’
I have the money, so why not? I agree to buy the ticket.
‘That sounds splendid. Can I take your name, Reverend?’
I give him my name and three pounds and ten shillings. I turn to look out at the chairs where I can wait for the flight when I notice a stunning blonde woman in a slim-fitting black dress with white piping. She wears a cloche hat, and she is looking at straight me. She is also wearing a red rose in her lapel.
‘Reverend Cadmon?’ she asks tentatively. There’s no one else around here with a dog collar, so it is a fair bet that I am he. I take off my hat to reveal my shaved head.
‘Sally Morgan,’ she says. ‘I believe we’re travelling to Paris together.’