Do you see what I see?
The Allcity shimmered in that ridiculous way that always annoyed the hell out of Philip. The jittering vibrations of mindless want and shallow impulse. Here was the madness of crowds given room to stretch its legs and go wild. The small blessing was that culturally, it was still seen as juvenile to fly around in a craft or costume pulled directly from pop culture, so at least he was spared the consumerist regurgitation that geysered all over other sections of the Other. The old guard that controlled and thrived on the Ball still had their foot pressed firmly down on that issue.
Still, it had all long since lost its luster for him. Now that he knew how the sausage was made, how the mem was stamped, how deep the shadows at the center of this “All-World” really went, he could only watch the little figures flutter by with a quiet laughter.
If only you would stop staring at mirrors and having sex with false memories, you people could tear this world apart.
Michael sat down next to him. He had this little loft, with its unyielding gravity and soft light separation, made for people like Philip, who detested flying. However, those people were usually upper echelon fucks who didn’t like to be seen floating around like Peter Pan lest it smudge their desperately maintained aura of power. Philip, on the other hand, just honest to God wasn’t good at it. Every time he tried to fly, he got the idea in his head that he would float off into the black and be unable to kick his way back to the ground, and of course, in the realm of ideas, that’s often exactly what happened.
He wasn’t sure if Michael was fucking with him by meeting him here, or if it was actually an act of kindness. No. That’s a lie. He knew it was an act of kindness. But trying to believe it was some dig was, paradoxically, a way to preserve his ego. It was in this state of mind that Michael dropped the bomb.
“So I’m pretty sure Constellation is involved.”
Philip, instinctively, looked around to see if anyone was listening. Michael, sensing Philip’s unease, made some subtle motion and lemon lime soda started pouring over the window, turning the skyline even more surreal. Philip felt like slugging Michael for his patronizing, but he had bigger fish to fry.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Michael opened his mouth, then laughed.
“Maybe I should start at the beginning. When we got hired for the office job, or the, uh,” He looked in the air and rolled his hand. Philip scoffed.
“The office job is fine. Let’s keep it simple.” Michael had a bad habit of wanting to give his operations flowery names, and the first time Philip had said what he thought of one of them, the big guy had looked absolutely crushed.
“Ok, well, when we got hired for the office job, it wasn’t off a posting. Klara brought us the offer from a direct contact.”
“Isn’t that what you brought her on for?”
“Yes, but that wasn’t the strange part. Before we even agreed, there were an awful lot of meetings. Kind of like they were trying to vet us.”
“I don’t see how—” Philip started. Michael raised a hand.
“Let me finish. But even after the job, they wanted to meet again, in a public place, so to speak.”
“Yeah, that was goofy,” Philip agreed. Masking up was standard procedure when a Hardworlder toured the Other as himself, and maintaining rapport with your clients was important, at least for the higher management, but having the entire team meet a client after a job like that was extremely unusual. Philip had assumed it was a power play. The kind of Hardworlder politics that had infested everything since the second war. But it didn’t seem like Michael to bend to such theatrics.
“Almost like they were still vetting us.” Michael struggled to find what he wanted to say, and Philip jumped in.
“Yeah, but
that’s
not unusual either, Mike. Guys like that want to keep teams on retainer. Maybe wanted to make sure we weren’t the type to embarrass them at the potlucks and shit.”
“But that’s the thing! They never contacted us again. Klara said it was radio silence from her contact from then on.”
“Mike,” It was Philip’s turn to struggle for words. How do you tell a guy that he has the aura of the weird kid who ate bugs for a laugh, and that all his friends and chosen associates were even worse?
“I know, I know. The obvious answer is that they decided we weren’t worth the hassle, but then I started thinking about the door.”
Philip got still, relaxed, his body became completely free of tension and voluntary stimulus, open to any attack or danger, ready to react. It was a reflex from the Hardworlds. Right now, Philip wanted his mind on overdrive, because he had been thinking about the Door too, and no way he looked at it yet had calmed the dumb animal irritation, the clawing feeling that something about the whole job had been off, and the Door was the clue.
“What about the door?”
“You said it yourself. How did a bottom board team like No Fucks Given afford a doormaker? Why would they even want a doormaker?”
Philip stared at the wavering quasi-city, now obscured in yellow-green haze. In all honesty, he had always hated Doors, or as he still thought of them, Bridges. In his time, a door was a portal out of the Hardworlds into the Other, usually necessitated by a Spirit’s inexperience. A little push to get the Spirit into out of the pull, they usually took the form of a strange feature in the Hardworld replicated in the dreamworlds, like a creepy back door or a tunnel, similar to a fragment. When capital D Doors had been invented, if you could call it that, over fifteen years ago, as a kind of modification of door architecture, he had prayed to God they would go out of style like animal print on assault rifles. But they were still here, and they still felt like a cheat, Like a tacked-on rule tarnishing an otherwise perfect sport. Which is why it had been so difficult to put his finger on what exactly had felt off about one popping up in the Office Job. The expense of one had really just been a convenient excuse, or had it?
“Why anyone wants a doormaker, Mike,” Philip sighed. He had long since learned the best way to get Michael to explain something in detail was to pretend not to believe it. “To get the VIP to another Hardworld if shit goes wrong.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Michael said with gusto as Philip bit back a smile. “I mean if a guy like Tony Tannerite got his hands on enough mem to buy a doormaker, would he?”
“Who?”
“The boss of NFG! I thought you kept up with this stuff?!”
Philip knew exactly who Tony Tannerite was, but he couldn’t help himself. Michael just got so hilariously frustrated if he felt he wasn’t being understood, especially when discussing his current obsession. Philip admonished his inner child and promised to stay civil for the rest of the conversation. After all, somewhere down the line, Constellation was going to come into play, supposedly.
“Oh right, yeah. No, I expect he would buy better makers and Sages, roll into the job with a bunch of Ma’ deuces mounted on Hiluxes or something.”
“Exactly! So why did he have one?”
“Because someone bought it for him.” It had been a joke when it came out, but as it bounced around in the air, Philips blood froze. Holy shit. Still, he didn’t let Michael on to his concern.
“Bingo,” Michael said through his teeth. “Someone bought them a door. But why would they do that? Why buy some crash dummy circus running guard duty for a low-level watch job a fucking door?”
Philip said nothing. His mind was rolling it around, but he couldn’t see the angle. Michael had a gleam in his eye that gave Philip flashbacks. It was beyond irritating. He clearly knew the answer, but was waiting for Philip to ask.
Instead, Philip faced out the window, crossed his fingers in his lap, and put a thoughtful frown on his face.
“Hmm.”
Michael, predictably, couldn’t contain himself.
“Because they wanted the VIP moved to the Hardworld on the other side.”
On its face, the statement was such a platitude that Philip wanted to scream, but after a moment,
“They wanted to take the target for themselves.”
“Exactly! A third party, who didn’t want—”
“But why not just hire their own team to drop the target out?!” Philip did his best to make it seem like he actually believed the importance of what he was saying, but his heart wasn’t in it. In fact, his heart was in his throat. Pieces were falling into place. Pieces that made him want to drop into a Hardworld and say sayonara to the Ball for good. But Michael kept grinning like the first kid who had figured out how to get Snorelax to get out of the fucking way.
“Because they didn’t want him getting screened by the Sect.”
The fact that Michael could mention those fucking vampires with a smile gave Philip a cold shiver unique to the sudden realization that one was alone with a crazy person. The art of catching a Spirit after it had been expelled from the Hardworlds was a necessary but disgusting part of the business, as far as Philip was concerned. The sect lived by a religious code of honor, hence the name, and guarded the secrets of their methods totally. Philip knew that any group with such a veil of holiness had to be rotten to the core.
But more to the point, the Sect was an infamously neutral body (they had risen first out of the necessary cooperation catching dropped out Spirits required and then persisted and grew into the Jericho-allied powerhouse they were now by doing only their job and doing it well). They would only “screen” captives for memory if there was something big at stake, though they had a responsibility, per their creed, to report any crimes they learned of, supposedly to help find any lost Spirits kept in an unregistered box somewhere, or some other boogeyman. So if the guys they were dealing with wanted to keep the target on ice without the Sect knowing about it, and also had the funds to buy a doormaker for some throwaway team, they were probably the kind of people for whom the major laws were just guidelines.
Fortunately, the likelihood of that being the case was slim to none. Unfortunately, it was up to him to make Michael understand that.
“So the game was to give these bozos a door, let them drop the target into it once they folded like a wet box, and then keep him for themselves? Why? Why not just take him in the first place? Why would someone want to avoid the Sect? And more importantly, Mike, what the fuck could that dipshit have done or known about that would make him so important?”
“I don’t know. His official crime was an unconsented mem scan. I think we both know how bullshit that charge was.”
There was a silence. Unconsented Mem scan was usually a catch-all offense, more often than not used to run a play on someone while you gathered evidence of other crimes. Still, Philip couldn’t let his mask of skepticism slip.
“So, this guy had something big on him, knew some secrets, or where the bodies were buried. But we popped him anyway, so what? What was the big secret he was holding on to? Surely the Sect posted it if it was that important?”
Again, Michael smiled, but this time the playful excitement was tempered.
“Nope. Not a thing. Trust me, I’ve made sure.”
His enigmatic sources, again. Philip sighed and soldiered on.
“So what, it was something too hot to let out? Maybe a method for breaking into something they didn’t want broadcast?”
“No. If that was the case, they would have woven a fix into the Principalities, then announced it once it was no longer possible. Instead, just complete silence.”
Another pause. Philip was on the verge of tipping Michael out of his chair.
“So what then? What are you getting at, God dammit?”
“The people who did get a hold of him after we popped him are powerful enough to keep the Sect quiet.”
Philip laughed through his nose. “Mike, ok. Let’s take a step back. You say some powerful org is footing the bill for the door, then you say an even bigger fish paid us to drop the guy out, and then went and paid hush money to the fucking Friars? Isn’t the more obvious solution that NFG won a doormaker in a lotto or something?”
Michael stared at him with the most smug expression Philip had seen on him in years. It made Philip’s neck chill and his tongue sting with adrenaline, which was quite a feat in a world without flesh.
“Ok,” Philip started. “Let’s say you have uncovered a vast conspiracy. But have you considered the glaring flaw in this plan? Namely, us? If someone with enough money to pay off the Sect needed a guy dropped out, why the fuck would they pick us? All due respect to Liquid Light.”
Michael’s smile spread, and he leaned back in his seat like a strongman-sized Sherlock Holmes.
“Obfuscation. They wanted to keep their hands clean, so they used contractors who hired subcontractors. You need a fly swatted, but it’s sitting on a pile of nitroglycerin, so you take precaution.”
“So why not just contract a black job? It would be well within the means of your theoretical shadow players who run around shushing the fucking Sect.”
A black job was a Hardworld operation that circumvented the normal Hardworlding ecosystem, Sect and Boards and all, and instead used private catchers to grab the target Spirit once they were dropped out. They were, for most Hardworlders, little more than myth, and asking about them would have been like inquiring on the dietary habits of fairies, but Philip and Michael weren’t most Hardworlders, so Philip’s question and Michael’s reply were both deathly serious.
“Black teams tend to be experts in blackmail,” Michael said. “Last thing our second organization would want to deal with. Besides, like I said, they have enough pull with the Sect to keep them quiet. Why would they want anyone else to catch the guy?”
The conspiracy was taking shape, gaining depth, becoming a thing Philip could see and imagine, which he knew was the first step toward a loss of skepticism. He tried to recenter himself.
“Mike, take a step back, man. Right now all you have is a door that maybe shouldn’t be there, a client that didn’t call us for a second job, and a target that didn’t have his specific crime broadcast on the Feed, and maybe some extra overtime at the Constellation office. That’s it.”
“All that, and a gut feeling.” Michael looked Philip dead in the eye, and like so many other times in this God forsaken place, the truth flashed between them.
“A feeling I know you share,” Michael said. Philip rolled his eyes, lest any more secrets spill out of them.
“Ok, let’s say you’re right. Maybe something was off about that job, and we saw into the abyss for an afternoon around Dallas. I could consider that. But belief takes something more than just a gut feeling. So where does that leave us?”
Michael leaned in.
“So, that brings me to the next job.”
