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I'm Ergo to my employers, Jen to my friends, and Hasselti to the Systemic. Since you are all three, you can call me Ergo-Jen Hasselti. Hello! I can't say it's nice to meet you. You're not a you after all; you're a digital notebook, a way to organize my thoughts and keep a record in case I die, so it'll be up to you to tell my tale. Don't worry, I know it's a big responsibility, but I believe in you. We can make this relationship work; I'm sure of it.
A gem-encrusted snail the size of a locomotive drops us off at the crime scene. I'm told such transportation is the highest honor in Nusquama now. I have been away for hundreds of years, so they could be lying to me for all I know. Through that would mean, shock of all shocks, the Nusquamans have developed a sense of humor, and that is less likely than me taking up poetry.
The other two who rode here with me, Kal and Sweats, are experiencing the same culture shock. Nusquama doesn't change, but it always has a different coat of paint. At the moment, we have caught them in a whimsical pastoral phase. The manor in front of us is designed to look like a massive mushroom, with a large brick chimney and two circular windows. There are barriers in front to keep onlookers out, jarringly out of place with the neighborhood aesthetic.
"Maybe this guy was killed for his taste in decor," I say to Kal.
He laughs like a steam engine, his tank-like carapace jolting up and down. Sweats joins in, even though she hadn't heard the joke.
A woman in a double-buttoned vest hurries down to us. "Excuse me, this is no place for loitering. I don't know what costume party you stumbled out of, but all civilians are ordered to- "
She stops talking when she sees she only comes up to our ankles.
I'm shocked that anyone would mistake us for civilians. There's a height limit in Nusquama, but not so in exile. We all tower over the citizens here; it's hard not to develop an ego, and I have personally failed. And then our exoskeletons, hiding our bodies and giving us a terrible strength that the average Nusquamian would never need. The exoskeletons are a big thing.
"You're the Ultimatums we hired, aren't you?" She says.
"Got it in one!" Kal says, swiping at bees who have mistook his blocky orange body for a honeycomb. His head is a black spot with two white holes for his eyes, peeking out from an outer layer of bristling steel and chitin.
"Do you want a prize? We should give you a prize." Sweats says. Her body constantly vibrates, courtesy of a neural surgery a few years back that overclocked her reflexes. She's still getting the hang of standing still. Her exoskeleton is a pale shade of green and triangular, a look she says "makes her look like a deeply wise wizard." To me, it makes her look like a top constantly on the verge of falling over.
I nod. I've never been one for small talk, especially when I have two far more social companions to speak for me. Despite that, double buttoned shirt zeros in. She points at me and makes a "get over here" motion with her other hand. It seemed she is electing me the leader of our group of three. Nusquamians loves their hierarchies.
As Ultimatums, we're dragged out from our self-imposed exile every few hundred years to investigate and fix the cracks in their so-called perfect utopia—violence, mass hysteria, disease, anything that should be impossible under their strict guidelines.
In other words, the rare times things get interesting, we're bought in.
Entering the manor, we’re greeted by an interesting sight. The interior is, there's no other word for it, cozy.
Pastel walls with paintings of plump trees, sculptures of frogs and rabbits, real cute magical forest gnome shit. Shame it clashes so severely with the body hung up above the fireplace. Spelled out in fungi above his posed body was the phrase "EVERY MAN HAS TWO DEATHS."
Sweats whistled, spraying spit everywhere. "Are we allowed to touch the body?"
The woman made a face but nodded all the same. "If you think it will help with the investigation."
"Not yet; whoever did this put the body there for a reason." I took in the scene, imagining myself to be the poor sap who found the body in the first place. The body seems fresh like it had been killed and hung up moments before we stepped into the building. But that didn't mean anything, not when Nusquama opposed death as a concept.
They had long ago figured out the secret to reversing the aging process. Reversing the effects of knife wounds (which, judging by the state of our victim's neck, was how he died) had not yet been perfected. Despite this, the system keeps things in check, making murder, and death in general, theoretically impossible.
In the rare, statistically improbable situation that a death occurs, like the gruesome situation in front of me, there are procedures in place.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Bodies don't rot in Nusquama. They naturally produce formaldehyde. If someone bit the dust, there was no real problem. Their family and friends could still treat the corpse as a living, breathing citizen, just one that was perpetually asleep. Death, that loathsome Dragon, was treated as a nuisance that one must tolerate.
This is all to say that death in Nusquama is rare. Even rarer is a murder. I don't think it's crazy to assume this wasn't an elaborate suicide. The system has inhibitor chips that prevent anything meaner than cussing at your neighbor. Bottom line, this shouldn't be possible.
"Are we sure this isn't some misunderstanding?" Kal says, "Maybe there was an accident, our victim died, and the person who propped them up here did so as- "
"-A sign of respect? Yeah, setting up your buddy like he's a big-mouthed bass, real respectful." Sweats replies.
"We can confirm that's not true." Twice buttoned says, looking nervous. "There are irregularities with the body that suggest something far more dubious."
The knife marks for one. I was looking at the phrase above him. It's a pretty strange medium to write in. They didn't use paint or pen; they used lichen; they must have placed spores in the shape of the words and then waited for them to grow. "How long has the body been here?"
Twice buttoned sighed before answering. "Approximately Three months."
"Three months? Well, you certainly took your damn time letting us know.”
"We called you as soon as we knew." She says, backing away from an irate Sweats. "It was a census thing, done only hours ago. There was no reason to think anything was amiss beforehand."
This strikes me as strange. Surely they would have noticed his absence and checked on him sooner. "Did no one report him missing?"
"No," She says, her eyes wide, "There's no one to report, he doesn't exist."
Now, this takes us all a second. We share glances, trying to come up with our own guesses before we give the only reasonable response anyone could have in this situation. “We’re not experiencing a mass hallucination. There's a body in front of us, so explain what that actually means."
"Well… yes, we have a dead body, but his personal System has been completely wiped, along with his inhibitor. There's no record of anyone that matches his description, or anyone owning this house.”
Sweats modifies her hands to act as grappling hooks and scuttle crawls up the wall until she's right beside the body, careful not to touch it. "No one knows him? That's bullshit, you guys aren't known for having recluses."
"Yeah, he's gotta have a family." Kal adds.
"I'm sure he did, but they wouldn't remember him." Twice buttoned says, her expression cryptic.
"And what does that mean?" I ask.
"It means that for all practical purposes, this man is a ghost. Your task isn't to know why; it's to know how."
Kal rolls his shoulders, his signal that he's about to get angry if someone doesn't explain things quickly. Luckily, he has me, and I have enough brains for all three of us.
"I get it now," I say, pointing to the phrase in lichen above him. "I was wondering where the quote was from, Ernest Hemingway." He is a poet and writer from a good ten hundred spans back. I spent a few days obsessed with him. It was spans ago itself when I was a fangirl, but my brain is hardwired to remember, no matter what.
Twice buttoned gives me a wall-eyed stare. An entire Systemic database, and they still hadn't made the connection.
“The full quote is," I pause dramatically, honestly just buying time to remember the exact wording. “Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground, and the last time someone says his name."
Kal nods, catching on. "So this means-"
I turn to point at Twice Buttoned, who cringes at my gaze. "The Systems got its processors deep into all of you. You know I've been lucky enough never to be chipped. Is it a two-way street?"
"It has to be," She says. "We can access all information in the system freely, and it can access ours at any time in the same way. For us to be able to use it, we have to leave ourselves open mentally. I'm sure to you, such a model of existence seems oppressive, but it's an agreement everyone makes." I wasn't looking to argue the ethics, just make sure my hypothesis made sense.
"Got it, so if, say, I went into the System and removed all information on Ernest Hemingway, anyone connected would not only lose access, but they would lose any memories they had of him or his work. As if it never existed.”
Twice Buttoned took her time answering. "Yes… regretfully, you are correct. The memory would still be there, but because the System does not recognize or know it, we'd be unable to do the same.”
"So when our corpse was erased from the system-"Kal says, pleased to have caught up.
"All memories that he ever existed were erased too." I narrow my eye slits. “Why didn't you tell us that before?"
"A- an unintended security flaw," she stammers, "Need to know basis, we weren't fully aware that such removal was even possible, or its consequences. Surely you can understand why this could be an issue if it got out?”
That's the least of their worries. I shake my head, trying to comprehend the level of fucked they're currently in. "What you're dealing with is a massive blind spot." I wave wildly at the corpse. "This was set up intentionally. It's a taunt, a brag. The quote makes it clear they’re fully aware of what they did and why. They erased him from existence and for three months, have gotten off scot-free. If that doesn't prove old Ernest correct, nothing will.”
I'm getting worked up. You can't blame me. I'm not concerned for the populace; I am concerned by their incompetence. "This is a model of murder yet to be countered. Do you get that? Gods and Goddesses help you, but if I were them, I wouldn't stop here. I'd keep going until Nusquama fell, or I did. Whichever came first."
Twice Buttoned shakes her head. “Nusquama is a utopia, and we are past such fear-mongering. A single isolated incident does not change the fact that we are safer here than anywhere else in the world.”
I laugh in her face. “Yeah. That’d be a whole lot more convincing if I weren't in a room with a fucking trophy-mounted corpse.”
It's at this moment that the limits to Sweat's carefulness were reached. One of her claws slips, and with it did her leg, hitting the corpse and knocking it off the wall. It bounces off the fireplace and spins in midair a few times before coming to a fat, wet halt at my feet. Face down, uncomfortably plump ass up. There's something on his back.
Between the shoulder muscles of his pale body is a map of massive buildings and sprawling parks. It's a rather well-done map of Nusquama carved into his flesh. I lean down. Twice Buttoned makes a little groan when I grip the body's shoulder for a better look, but we're far past worrying about such trivial things.
There's x's, five of them, little notches in locations all around the city. One of which is scratched onto a quaint little mushroom house, a quaint little mushroom house that looks exactly like-
Fuck me. I push myself away from the body and stomp on over to Twice Buttoned. "This isn't an isolated incident."
"What?" The way her face scrunches up in terror is delightful to me.
"There are markings of other houses. Either they're current targets or will be in the future.”
My two fellow Ultimatums are already gearing up for conflict. I doubt we'll find it soon, but when you've modified your body for violence, it's always good to be prepared. "We're gonna check the closest location. Clear out those other three and tell us what you find." I'm already halfway out the door.
"Do- do you want your snail??"
"We'll walk!" I shout back. I have already taken a snapshot of the body map and am now overlaying it on the city. The closest location is only a few blocks away. It's inevitable that whatever awaits us there has been waiting for as long as this corpse, but we run all the same. Our bodies aren't built for patience.
I hear a reedy coughing to my left. I look over and find Sweat doing her best impression of laughter. It takes me a second, but then I join in, and so does Kal. We are running across cobblestones, jumping over hedge mazes, and dodging slugs and snails. Today was turning out to be quite fun.