The Process Server Read online

  ***

  I wish I could have identified some elemental factor that gave people self-control the further they seemed to get from Earth – the self-control that allowed them to log in, do some business and log out, just like that. And maybe it was the fact that Earthers are just a young species, all thing relative.

  But people out here at the edge of the Sector just weren’t addicted to the MultiNet like they were back home – and I include both Earth and the New Terra Colonies in that.

  There’s a reason Earth is known throughout the five Systems as a perennial candidate for cesspool of the year … and that’s because it’s an enormous cesspool, an unpredictable blend of modern glass cities that tower above the very pollution they create; environmental disaster zones; defoliated landscape; ocean life dying off rapidly.

  It’s tempting to blame the MultiNet for all of it, but that would be foolish. The MultiNet is a tool, the ultimate distraction, a fantasy life that also serves any number of legitimate business purposes. You can’t blame the tool.

  You have to blame the people who use it, and especially the salesmen who help them delude themselves into thinking it’s the best option.

  With 99% of the population of Earth online at all times, their lives consumed in earning credit to spend in VirtuTech Life Chambers Scenarios or just working in a virtual environment, there just wasn’t much time for people to step away and pay attention to the real world.

  To most of them, it was always about the community, and the community was online. So what was the point in logging off?

  Out here at the edge of the System, gateway to the four Galaxies and the K’Laar Trade Consortium, people still valued free will and reality, and the ability to enjoy it without requiring immense purchasing power or social status.

  So they didn’t stay online for long.

  The Drax was logged in to the booster for all the time it took to check some messages; then he was off again, his attention turned back to his cigarette and his drink, until he noticed me watching him.

  “Got a name, Earther?” he asked, his Wear-Tech translating us both into Univoice, the language of commerce.

  I wasn’t interested in sharing details. Nobody in a place like Anderson’s was up to any good.

  “I need information.”

  A shrug. “Don’t we all.”

  “A geography lesson?”

  “Got a particular location in mind?”

  His double eyelids rolled over each other eerily, and his diamond-shaped pupils dilated, highlighting his yellow irises, the dim bar light coolly reflecting off his scales. His snake-like forked tongue flicked out once reflexively.

  I moved over to his table and said, “That’s what I need to know. I’m looking for directions.”

  The Draxari consider industrial espionage among the highest callings. “Person, place or thing?”

  “Person. The Archivist.”

  “G’Farg’s Archivist?” He raised a ridge of hard scale that appeared to be an eyebrow. “You don’t want much, do you, Earther? Got a first-born you’re willing to hand over?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I said. I flashed him my Process Server ID, and he just assumed it was a Sector Police pass. Most people did, as they’re near-identical, a formless badge and an ID card.

  “Do you need me to swipe and confirm?”

  “Really?”

  “The galaxy’s safety is your safety, citizen.”

  “Huh. Could have fooled me.”

  “Are you going to comply or do I have to call backup?”

  The Drax’s silent contempt said I didn’t. He’d caught the last name on the badge. The Draxari are one of many species that joined Earthers in looking down on John Smiths and Jane Does, considering us humanity’s outcasts.

  Didn’t matter what job we had. Given that our ranks consist of unclaimed or unwanted offspring, it wasn’t far off the mark, and they objected to us having any authority, even bureaucratic. If you weren’t corporate or you weren’t family in this System, you were nobody.

  “My first SP shakedown and it’s some lousy Smith.” The Drax’s eyes had narrowed coldly. The face-saving move would have been to refuse my request, then take his chances with my alleged SP colleagues. But the SP did not play nice, and he just wasn’t that brave.

  Plus, SPs had a legal right to command a search from anyone logged on who they felt could provide it. The Drax turned back to the booster terminal and pulled the fingernail-sized jack from the lining at the end of his sleeve, plugging it into the terminal’s base.

  Just about everyone used Wear-Tech these days over portables. His head tilted back and his eyes glazed, focusing on the screen that his visor projected just ahead, invisible to anyone but him, equally unseen keypads hovering just below the fingertips of each hand.

  “I’m in, heading to Weatherall Stop.” The MultiNet used a sort of “subway system” of virtual cars to move people’s avatars – full-size, first person representations of themselves – between connecting hub stations. Weatherall Stop was a seven-spoke hub, which meant it offered more access to the rest of the static elements of the MultiNet than most, as well as hosting its own string of business sites.

  “OK, I’m at Weatherall, going to hit a few shops and scenario outlets, talk to you in a few minutes,” he said, before once more zoning out, pulling up the chin microphone on his headset to keep his conversation limited to the virtual world in front of him, then sliding his blackout visor into place from its slot in the back of his collar.

  Most people used blackout visors; it gave them a complete sense of immersion, of seeing a new world in first person, like living in someone else’s head, in a much better place.

  Management loved it that way, with every virtual environment both compelling and productive.

  Left to the management of the Big Six, Earth was looking a little rough: lowland flooding globally from the damaged ozone layer; massive defoliation and agricultural shortages due to the extinction of the honey bee and the near-end to natural pollination; pollution on such an epic scale that entire landmasses were uninhabitable; the breakdown of civil order in many nations that had led to the rise of the Big Six Corporations and their final, inevitable victory over the unnecessary machinations of “Big Government.”

  People could log in safely, work all day at their virtual office or assembly line, then step immediately out of their job and into a world that seemed much, much nicer than the real thing.

  It was almost as easy as selling food to a starving man, to give them a virtual-but-happy alternative to the bleakly sad reality.

  The Freeverse Alliance – the population of “fair traders” who continued to fight politically and otherwise for government and economic reform – numbered in the millions; but compared to the 18 billion logged on at any one time, the “Real Earth” population (as they preferred to think of themselves) couldn’t hold a candle to the delusional lure of MultiNet life.

  Even on the New Terra Colonies, where most of the population was Big Six Corp middle management, MultiNet addiction continued to spread, reaching out across the Sol System with magnetic appeal.

  MultiNet scenarios were just like being there: The wind gently breezing through the trees along each street; the feel of the sun’s warm rays on your face and neck; the smell of a kid’s bubblegum as he walks by on a hard city sidewalk; the background street traffic. When the Earther relaxed in a favorite scenario after a hard day at his or her “job” – which was also just another scenario, usually – it seemed as real as everything on Earth used to be.

  But to the companies that ran the MultiNet, users may as well have been mice on a treadmill, pushing the same invisible buttons in the same sequences, day after day. Over, and over, and over again, they would fire the engines of production and refine its output, then punch out without ever really leaving.

  For most of them, this script would run in one form or another for their entire 40-year lifespan, with yet another payoff to the
addicted: time in the MultiNet seemed to move at ten times the normal pace, packing a decade into every Earth year in Real Time.

  If they couldn’t beat cellular necrosis by reaching a middle management position within the Big Six Corporations and then moving off-world, they could at least feel like they were living for 400 years.

  Then one day, they’d get an invite in their mailbox, a brief e-mail offering them a chance to enjoy the scenario-of-a-lifetime. They all know what it means; and yet despite that, they always go.

  They have to know if the rumors are true, if it’s the greatest experience once can have, a virtual paradise beyond imagination, a place where your wildest dreams and fantasies come to life.

  And they never come out again.

  It wasn’t like anyone was forcing them to take the offer, any more than anyone was forcing them to become addicted to the MultiNet in the first place … although once in, the accumulated debt of their first few visits usually locked them into a survival pattern in which choice wasn’t really part of the equation.

  Addiction followed shortly thereafter, and once they gave in, once they really believed the scenarios were how their life was supposed to be? Then they were usually too far gone to help.

  But hey: that’s business.

  The bar was still busy, but no one was paying us any attention. I didn’t doubt he would deliberately drag out his visit, all the more effectively showing me disrespect in Draxari eyes.

  Of course, I’m not Drax, and I was working on expenses, having picked up the assignment automatically two days earlier from an auto-serve work terminal on the New Terra Colonies. So I couldn’t have given a damn how long he took. Spending time tracking down or hanging around an Archivist was the kind of job nobody could possibly want, which meant the pay was high and the hours long.

  I sipped my drink and watched the room while he worked, expertly navigating his way around with tiny finger movements – a quicker-but-less-protected, less visceral method of traversing the MultiNet “on foot” than a VirtuTech chamber, which allowed for free-suspended full-body movement.

  Earthers preferred the chambers’ full-immersion, but Draxari were all business, and much faster at finding things online than I would be.

  In a bar like this, my one concern was a fight breaking out with me unable to cover the Drax while he hunted online.

  I used to carry an illegal piece, despite the rules.

  But the security at G’Farg and the other Earther stations was brutal and it had ceased to be worth the risk. Our assumed authority is supposed to be all the protection a Process Server needs, so we’re not allowed to carry a sidearm.

  Plus, the Big Six Corps don’t really give a damn what happens to us, as we’re Smiths and Does, ideal to send out on long, dangerous searches, irrelevant whether we came back or not – except for whether we got their job done for them, of course.

  As good as the Draxari are at ferreting out intel, they’re absolutely useless at protecting themselves. But in the end I was just being paranoid; for all the nasty-looking characters filling up the bar’s booths, no one was inclined to start trouble.

  A few minutes passed before the Drax flipped down the chin mic again and refocused on me.

  “The Archivist was on a charter to Earth yesterday,” he said. “I expect he’s there already, or close.”

  Ah, hell. I hated going to Earth.

  In fact, I hadn’t been back in more than a decade. As I said, there are plenty of reasons why it’s justifiably seen as the Galaxy’s premier cesspool, and as good as the Drax was at searching, he hadn’t pinned the Archivist’s location down any more specifically.

  I wasn’t expecting a miracle, after all: archivists’ jobs were far too valuable, influential and dangerous for them to remain in one spot for any length of time, or to allow their travel itineraries to leak.

  I wasn’t going to tell the Drax that I was fairly confident I could track him down once I was on Earth proper. That smacked of arrogance and, as I said, he hated Smiths already. Besides, he might have wanted to know how, and I wasn’t sure myself entirely, at least not yet.

  Instead, I tried to get him to narrow it down. “Nothing else? Maybe one regional name more common than others on the passenger manifest? Something?”

  “Nope,” he said.

  I played my cards broad. “You don’t sound like you’re really trying. I’d hate to think you were putting one over on the Sector Police.”

  The Drax looked annoyed. “Screw you, copper,” he said. “I did what you asked me. I don’t have to help a stinking Smith any more than that.”

  “Yeah?” I leaned in as menacingly as I could.

  Give that the average Drax outweighs the average human by at least 100 pounds it was an admirable attempt, although that probably had more to do with the perceived authority than anything else.

  “Why don’t you try a little harder?”

  The look said he was pissed right off, but he slid the visor back in place anyhow. I nursed a beer while he poked around some more.

  When he logged out again a few minutes later, it was with an air of finality.

  He added, “Tail number on the ship was OE6D-23, registered out of New Tokyo. Might be where he’s headed. Look, I don’t know how much more you expect. I’m not getting into anything private without a warrant, you know? As far as the publicly accessible shit goes, that’s the best I can do.”

  “It’ll have to do, I guess. But keep your head down. We’re watching out for you, citizen,” I said, using the SPs catchphrase.

  “Yeah, right,” said the Drax, before turning his attention back to the holo on the far wall.

  I headed out of the bar and back into the busy walkway, towards the Station’s docking port. There was no way I could catch up to his ship, but I wasn’t too worried.

  Archivists didn’t do anything in half measures, and if his business on Earth was serious enough to go there personally, it wasn’t something that was going to take place in a day.

  One thing was for sure: there was a good chance that, no matter his business, the Archivist would spend most of his time Earth-side in the MultiNet, because that’s where Archivists tended to work. And that meant I would probably have to log in as well.

  Outside of my once-monthly bank visit to handle my ship payments – a high-interest and still-regrettable loan from the notorious gangster Fesker Munch – I avoided the MultiNet like Big Six upper management avoided real work. I didn’t even like logging in that much, but I still had an addictive enough personality to realize the dangers of that much fantasy fulfillment.