* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * SEX, LIES, AND NECROMANCY by Daniel Parsons and Brandi Weed It is the undesirable activities of secret societies, and their very air of mystery, which have given them the reputation of being strange, abnormal associations. When, however, their beliefs become those of the majority, they cease to be considered antisocial. It is as simple as that. -- Arkon Daraul * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * It was early in the afternoon, and Janie was playing Kosho again. She'd gotten better at the game, and had managed to dunk No. 95 (once) that day. As she was bouncing on her trampoline, her badge suddenly started beeping, and flashing red. She grabbed the badge and looked at it. It was flashing "2"; in a panicky moment, she almost tossed it in the Kosho pool, before she realized it wasn't counting down, just flashing and beeping. Well, this is new and different, she thought. "Hey, 95, you know what this means?" "Que?" Never mind, she thought, chewing on her lip. The badge beeped for what must have been 15 seconds, then stopped. Sort of like a pager. "I think I better be leaving. Good game, ok?" "Bouncy bouncy?" "No, no bouncy bouncy. Leave now." "Ok. More dunk late in time?" "Yeah, sure. You taking English classes, No. 95?" "Que? Ai, English, si! Tuesday, Thursday, 4 o'clock." "Good! I am going now. See you soon." After showering and dressing, Janie headed over to the building with the green domed roof, where No. 2 had told them he could be found. There was only one door, a big wood double door with brass fittings. It opened automatically, and at the end of a long hall another door opened into a huge chamber, that must have taken up most of the building. The walls were covered with huge screens, like television or movie screens, with scenes from all over the Village playing on them. There was no sound, though there were speakers above each screen. In the middle of the room, a huge desk covered with buttons and levers and screens, more like an instrument panel from Star Trek, encircled a black metal sphere about 4 feet high. As the door closed behind her, the sphere turned; the inside had been hollowed out to make a chair, and No. 2 was seated inside. "Good afternoon, No. 12." He pressed three buttons on the desk. Holes opened up in the floor, and three somewhat more conventional chairs rose up. "Please, have a seat. The others are on their way." "Uh, sure thing." Janie sat. The chair wasn't very comfortable. The screens were displaying views from various hidden cameras totally at random; lots of sunny walks, the beach, and people dithering about inside their homes. Perversely, Janie wondered if the cameras ever showed someone having sex. Would they censor it while 2 had visitors in here? Probably. If he didn't? Probably not. "Uh... why am I here?" No. 2 didn't even look at her. "That's rather an important philosophical question, No. 12. Each of us must find his or her own answer, naturally." Janie blinked. "No, why am I here today?" "Why wouldn't you be?" If No. 2 was joking, it wasn't exactly obvious. His expression never varied all that much. And you couldn't even see his eyebrows behind those dark glasses he always had. Janie tried leaning to one side to try to see behind them, but just then, the door opened and Angel walked in. Ardrin was close behind her. "Good afternoon, No. 11, No. 10. Please, seat yourselves. Would you care for any refreshment before we talk?" A tray of little sandwiches came up out of the desk. Angel glared fiercely at No. 2, then held up her badge. "I assume this means you wish to see me? And no, I'm not hungry. I wish to know the meaning of this, and then I shall be leaving." "What kind of sandwiches are those?" Ardrin asked. "An assortment, of course. It is only natural that here in Your Village, we would make every effort to accommodate as wide a range of tastes and preferences as we can. You yourself may favor the banana slices there on the left." "Got any beef jerky or something?" "No. 10, we make every effort to insure that Our Village is a cruelty-free, non-exploitative environment, and I'm afraid that would be completely incompatible with our highest ideals." Ardrin nodded. "Oh, yeah. Sorry, keep forgetting that." "Never mind how morally pure we all are," Angel said. "Why are we here?" "I already asked that," Janie noted. "I have asked you here so that we might have a talk together, about some very important matters. And why you are here, in at least one sense, is exactly what we will discuss. So please, make yourselves comfortable, and we shall begin." Ardrin grabbed the sandwich tray, and he an Angel sat down. "Firstly," No. 2 began, "I wish to offer you all congratulations on doing so well, in what must be a difficult time for you. You have been unceremoniously plucked out of your lives, and deposited in a strange and alien environment. Most others react in a most ridiculous manner, dashing about, or demanding their legal rights; I am quite heartened that you have reacted so rationally. It is encouraging." "Well, sure." Ardrin flipped a banana slice in his mouth. "What's not to like, I mean?" "No. 10, you are a miserably bad liar. Do not attempt it again. None of you are happy here, and all of you will make an attempt to escape at some point. Our computers predict that you, for example, will make 4 escape attempts this year, with a 29% probability that you will die during one of them. That, however, is not scheduled for discussion at this point." All three agents looked very, very surprised. Angel was the first to find her tongue. "My goodness, how candid of you, No. 2. Surely, such cynicism must be in violation of several of Our Village's rules of social etiquette. If you aren't careful, you'll be declared disharmonious." "That is beside the point, No. 11. The point is that you have been placed here, not for your own good, but because of something you know that we want to know, and we do not want anyone else to know. I will also remind you that everyone in Our Village is our prisoner; we have been keeping prisoners for a very long time. It is doubtful that you could devise a means of escape we have not seen before, and found a way to circumvent. You will be here for the rest of your lives, or until we see fit to remove you." Another silence descended upon the room. "We'll just have to see about that, won't we?" Angel said. "We shall. But in the meantime, as your warden, I shall ask you a few questions now. Truthful answers would be greatly preferred. Firstly, in case you were unsure, you have been brought here because of the events that transpired during your visit to the Orkney Islands, with your late supervisor. There are numerous inconsistencies between the reports we have of what transpired there." Angel said, "If you wish to know what happened up there, it's all in the reports we gave to our superiors, which you doubtless have been able to obtain copies of. Any inconsistencies there may be are because we ourselves aren't sure what happened." "It's kind of hard to see straight when you've been dosed with mescaline, you know," Ardrin said. "Of course. Now, where is Mr. Merryweather, the owner of the house you were found in?" "I shot him while he was in a boat out at sea," Angel said. "He fell out of the boat into the water. There was a great storm, and he doubtless drowned or died of his injuries, and sank." "Of course. Where is Mr. Finger?" "Finger wasn't on the island." "We don't know where he is," Janie said. "We last saw him back in Scotland, and he wasn't in the Orkneys." "Of course. Did you remove anything from the house?" "No," they all said. "Thank you. Now, is the name Peterson familiar to you?" They all looked at each other. "No. Never heard of him." "Did you see anything unusual while you were in the islands?" "In what sense?" Angel asked. "Something that would strike you as difficult to account for." "No, not really." "Now, your supervisor, Mr. Grayson. What reasons did he give you for traveling to the Orkneys when he did? According to our file, No. 11 was in the hospital at the time." For a long moment, several emotions flitted across Angel's face, before she said, "No. 2, I fully support the actions of our superior, in the belief that haste was necessary to accomplish our goal in the case. As such, I... respect and support the decision he had made to remove me from the hospital before my official release date, and feel it was the best thing that could be done under the circumstances." "Thank you, No. 11. But why did he feel such haste was needed?" "Because a bunch of psychos were knifing people right and left?" Ardrin opined. "I think it's because a ghost attacked Ardrin," Janie said. There was an almost microscopic pause. "A ghost. And you believe this prompted your superior to leave early?" "It is when the 'ghost' looked like Merryweather." "No. 2," Angel said, "I distinctly recall Mr. Grayson saying he did not believe in ghosts. But he felt that Ardrin was not the sort to make things up, so something had threatened him, and the hospital was no longer a safe place." "Of course. No. 10 has been assigned an Imaginativeness ranking of 3 on our scale; perhaps your supervisor intuitively grasped this." Ardrin looked vaguely insulted. No. 2 continued: "Have any of you had any exposure to what you believe are supernatural events in the past?" Angel frowned. "I have not." "Uh, nope." Ardrin dropped a peanut butter sandwich on the floor and stomped it into the carpet. "Well, my cousin held a seance for her dead cat when I was 12. But it didn't work, of course." "Of course. I believe that will be all. Thank you very much for your time, and I wish all of you a pleasant afternoon." Daniel Parsons Brandi Weed Questions or comments to parsons@indigo.ucdavis.edu Available for ftp from ftp.cs.pdx.edu, in /pub/frp/stories/SLN