System 2.0 - Division of Powers

The Man in Red

Esther followed the path back to the main road. The simulation was still active but the valley had become eerily quiet. She didn't pass anyone on the way, and the sound of voices was less obvious than it had been. She suspected that many of the visitors had already moved on.

She reached a patch of pasture land by the road and looked down into the valley. She could see Sitrep and his team working their way along the line of the broken track. They seemed to be taking measurements, but she wasn't sure what they hoped to discover. Many of them could visit the actual site and see it for themselves - although it may have been overrun already by emergency workers, repair crews, journalists or curious bystanders.

A transit box had been set up beside an old road sign. A queue of people were waiting to leave. She could see no sign of the two System agents.

'What do you think?' the man in the red jacket said, appearing by her side again.

She looked him up and down once more.

'I think you're following me,' she said.

He grinned with amusement.

'I think our employers may have given us similar missions,' he suggested. 'Perhaps we should work together.'

Esther remembered the exchange between Certaine's avatar and this newcomer. She didn't like it when her employer played games.

'Are we not working for the same people already?' she asked.

He smiled again and shook his head.

'Not at this point,' he replied. 'I'm here to represent the Martian Council, not your Big Six.'

She raised her eyebrows.

'System analyst?'

'Would you believe me if I said, lawyer?'

She was ready ready to believe anything by that point, but she wondered why the Martian Council would send a lawyer to represent them at the scene of a terrorist attack on Earth.

'You're an avatar?'

He nodded.

'As you know, it's too far to transmit a conscious mind. You're currently seventeen minutes away from us, so the only way to do this is to send an avatar.'

This confirmed what she had already suspected. She was dealing with a projection, a sophisticated copy which transmitted its experiences back to the original entity as a stream of memories.

'So, what do you think?' he asked again.

She sighed.

'I think we're only at the beginning,' she said. 'There's more to come, and we don't know what we're dealing with yet.'

He nodded.

'Come and see me on Mars,' he said, passing her a card. 'When you have a minute, let me show you what we've got.'

She didn't reply immediately. Mars was a long distance away, however you measured it. Travelling in person would take months, and she disliked avatars.

'Maybe,' she said eventually, as she allowed the information on the card to enter her memory. 'I need some time to think first.'

The man nodded.

'By all means,' he said. 'You know where I am.'

He wandered off without another word, and she watched him go.

Deletions, explosions, investigations and now Martians. What was going on? How was it all connected? What did she need to know?

She shook her head and joined the queue for the transit box.