Book One
The Boys in Blue
Rose Cottage
East Harling
Norfolk
East England
RealWorld

The phone rang.

I looked at the incoming number.

A call from The Sprawl. Always bad news.

I was tired, had spent three days in the Chicago Badlands trying to sort out software that shouldn’t be that difficult to sort out. Bullets spewing out of some machine guns and turning forty degrees a few feet after leaving the barrel were not what players expected in a 1920’s game of AlCapone Cops and Robbers. Some of the players were shooting round corners and the rest of the players were getting very fed up. I guessed it was a software bug. I’d been sent in to correct the problem before someone got hurt and my employers, ThemeCorp Inc, got heavily sued. It had taken time, but I think I’d solved it before coming home from SecondWorld.

The number calling was not one I recognized.

The area code was from the OuterSprawl, in an area that used to be quaintly called Essex.
I left it ringing and went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, broke off a section of chilled fresh french bread, split it with my fingers, squashed two wedges of Boursin cheese into the split and went back to the computer room.

The phone continued ringing. Someone wanted to contact to me badly.

I took a bite from my sandwich, one munch, and answered the phone.

‘Yeah.’ No need to say much more. My number was ex-GooglePages and I wanted to know who was ringing me before I got in to further conversation.

‘Mister Smith?’ It wasn’t a voice I recognized. But the way it barked at me made me realize it was official. I waited; the voice would continue if it wanted me urgently enough. ‘Conor Smith?’

‘Who wants him?’ I continued the wary wary approach.

‘Nigel Klos. Detective Inspector with the London Met.’

‘I wasn’t there.’

‘No humour, please. We have a major incident here. Someone got murdered.’

‘I’m Conor Smith.’ I got serious; and worried.

‘Thank you.’ Klos hesitated for a moment, as if sensing my anxiety. ‘Please don’t be concerned. We just need your help.’

‘Why? Did I know this person, or persons?’

‘No. But you were a member of the police once.’

‘A long time ago.’

‘Once a copper, always a copper. You have special skills we need.’

I presumed he meant my computer skills. I’d never got mixed up with thieves and murderers and the rest of the criminal fraternity. Not unless they’d been computer hacks. A long time ago, when I was fifteen years old, the police arrested me for hacking in to my school reports, changing them and then round-robining all the personel files on the teachers I disliked. It took the police a long time to trace me, but they were so impressed that they didn’t prosecute, but press-ganged me into the TCPU, their Technological Crime Prevention Unit. So I went from hacker to cracker and became their top operative against computer fraud. I finally moved on on my twentieth birthday. That morning I went to work and hacked into the TCPU’s most confidential files, the very ones I already had access to. Only this time I left a trail via various countries, Internet service providers, websites and the computers of some of the largest global corporations. My aim was to let the TCPU know that they’d been accessed, but unable to trace the aource. By lunchtime, with my colleagues going frantic as they tried to find the hacker, I switched off my machine, wiped out all evidence that trailed back to me, spiked the source to 10 Downing Street as the zone where the hack had been created, handed in my resignation and left Scotland Yard. I knew they knew it was me. But they also knew they’d trained me too well to pin it on me.

So I was surprised, even after all these years, that they were asking for my help.

‘I have different skills now.’

‘You’re a GameMaster.’ I was. GameMasters were the top of the programming tree in SecondWorld. People like me built The Brick and programmed the whole virtual reality world that ran in parallel with the RealWorld we lived in. Most people preferred SecondWorld. It was more fun than living in the dreary decaying reality that the politicians and do-goodnik control freaks had created. SecondWorld was the escape clause that allowed people to live their dreams in virtual reality; the avatars they inhabited now had, because of the latest bio and nerve sensitive technology that fed off their brain cells, the ability to taste and feel and experience all the sensory powers they had in their real lives. Nirvana had come of age. And, as a GameMaster, I was one of the few who had the keys to go where I wanted and design the future.

So why would a London copper need a GameMaster?

‘Sure. But you’re in Essex. I only operate in SecondWorld.’ He didn’t ask how I knew he was in Essex.
‘That’s what we might need.’

‘Might?’

‘Do you know a journalist called Jonathon Holby?’

‘No.’ But the name was familiar.

‘Good. Then why don’t you come down here and discuss it with me?’
‘Where are you?’

‘In a house. In Coggeshall.’ He gave me the address.

‘Can’t we discuss it on the phone?’

‘Rather not. You never know who’s listening.’

‘Give me your warrant card number.’

He gave me his identity codes. ‘I can send a police helicopter for you. Once you’ve checked me out.’
‘I’ll find my own way.’ Wow! Important if they were prepared to send a chopper.

I hung up, called the Police Regional HQ in Redbridge and got a clearance on DCI Nigel Klos. They also confirmed he was in Coggeshall; they just didn’t admit to me what he was doing there. Then I ran him through Google’s Findanyoneshistory.com. He was impressive, in the top three of all English arrest and conviction tables. It was a crazy system, where the police were paid by results. But that’s how Europe had become. Everything had a price. Klos’ picture showed a neat man with a neat moustache and bright blue searching eyes set in a worn-out face with an expression of permanent worry. I took him to be about sixty; when the average life expectancy was over one-thirty, that made him quite a young senior cop. Unlike many of his colleagues, but like me, he wore no face jewelry except for a small gold stud in his left ear; he wore nothing fancy, just a light blue shirt and simple dark grey tie wrapped in a brown suit. He had that look; the customs-officer glance that makes you feel guilty when you walk through the green sign with nothing to declare. His metier was murder; usually big and important cases. And he wanted my help.

I then ran a search on a journalist called Jonathon Holby. There wasn’t much on him; he was a secretive guy who was the best paparazzi in the business.

Suddenly I wasn’t tired any more.

I downloaded the files on him and Klos to read in detail later, then finished the sandwich, drank a glass of Israeli ugli juice, code-locked and left Rose Cottage to drive to the station.

I was going to take the train, but it was a clear, crispy cold, autumn starry night. That’s what I liked out here. Clear nights you could see forever, layers and layers of stars and forever civilisations stretching above you; the harder you looked, the more you saw. That would all change soon, when the grey-clouded seasonal monsoon rains came.

Oh the joys of global warming.

I slapped the hood down and decided to drive to where civilization ended and The Sprawl began.