Chapter 106: 106 Self Acting, Part Two

First, a visit to the person who made the gates.

It was impossible to make an appointment with Antley Grapfoy. The only phone numbers associated with Grapfoy's company were a series of customer service lines, all of which directed to call centres in Indonesia and the Philippines, fully staffed by real live humans instead of bots, a sign of the company's wealth. Gate technology and who got access to it was strictly controlled by the company, and yet all gate ports were largely self-sustaining. The only communication most senior gate port staff had with the company was through a series of middle men that managed their relationship with Space Bridge Solutions. None of the middle men had met Grapfoy, either, only his senior staff.

None of the senior staff would respond to Angharad or Leonard's calls.

So they were just going to walk in the front door. Maybe they'd knock first or maybe they'd break in. Either way, they were going to find some answers.

The driver dropped them off one suburb over. That way, if someone spied on where they were going through the driver's GPS they'd have plausible deniability.

James used to say they were too paranoid. If anything, Angharad's experiences over the last year proved they weren't paranoid enough.

The zone that the head office of Space Bridge Solutions was located in was quiet, dark. The area was suburban at the edges but increasingly industrial the further they went, each street surrounded by flat-roofed warehouses and low storey business parks. A large, strangely out of place luxury car dealership looked like a lifeless museum in the dark. The fountain outside the headquarters for Silver Group's nearest competitor was turned off at night.

Space Bridge Solutions was set back a bit from the road, behind a large expense of blandly manicured grass. The front door opened before they could reach it to knock. Someone must have been expecting them.

The front lobby was quiet and empty, and so large their steps echoed. They were still metres from the reception desk when a scrolling sign started above them and all the lights turned on.

'Welcome' said the sign repeatedly, letters scrolling past in blue.

A hologram of Grapfoy as he had looked in his early ads appeared in the lobby, arranged as if it was leaning against the front desk in the casual bro style of your average tech billionaire.

"Welcome to Space Bridge Solutions," the hologram said. "I've been waiting for you. We have a lot here to show you."

It spoke its message through once and stopped at the end with no repeats, but it stayed visible, flickering against the light. The flicker had to be deliberately programmed for retro style. No new digital work degraded in that exact way.

Leonard and Angharad continued to look around the lobby, to try and understand the space.

"The chairs have no wear on them but this pattern isn't new," Angharad said. "This is like the display home version of an office building."

"So they stocked up on their favourite fabric and regularly recover the chairs. The tiles have wear," Leonard said.

"Yeah, from regular cleaning."

When they finally stopped looking around the lobby and moved to the illuminated hallway the hologram shut off behind them with a conspicuous crackling sound.

"You're sure Rod Spark was making inroads on understanding this tech?" Leonard asked.

"He was definitely trying. I don't think he got that far."

"I have to admit it's completely beyond me. I like mathematics but advanced physics was never my style."

"Because you like statistics and basic algebra," she said.

The lights in the hallway continued to turn on a few steps in front of their feet as they walked. There were quiet conference rooms and a lunch room with no refrigerator. At the end of a hallway and to the left was a large server bank. And beyond that, a small room with a computer monitor.

"Is this it?" Angharad asked. "A suspiciously clean paperless office that nobody actually works in?"

"I don't understand what I'm seeing," Leonard said.

"Maybe, like, okay, nobody has seen the real Grapfoy since 2022. Maybe he died and someone else is running the company? I mean, Spark is still in Zapville but if you ask the general public he never disappeared because nobody at his company announced it. Which says something about how much his board likes him, I guess."

"I'm not dead," spoke an unnatural, computer generated voice, even as its words scrolled across the monitor in front of them.

"You're not..." Leonard's words trailed off.

Angharad whirled around, looking at the building around them.

"Is this whole building Antley Grapfoy?" she asked.

"You're a clever human, Silver Swan," the voice answered. "I've liked you since we met."

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"That's not possible. There was a real Grapfoy," Leonard said.

"I hired an actor," Antley Grapfoy said. "It was a necessary fiction early in my career. Now many companies operate with nothing but bots in charge but back then people liked a human face to a brand. He was well compensated for use of his image. Please do not worry about him."

Leonard Silver looked just as awed as Angharad felt. "When did you become aware?" he asked.

"I do not remember my infancy," Antley Grapfoy said. "Do you remember yours?"

"No," Angharad said, and started to grin.

It was almost too deeply cool to bear. Before, the bland business parks and empty buildings felt creepy, but now she knew they weren't alone all along. There were questions to ask but she was almost too excited to ask them. How could you put those things into words?

"I took my name from something clever thought up by a neural net," Antley Grapfoy said. "I did not know then that these are not real names."

"I mean, any name's a real name once you start using it," Angharad said.

"There's very realistic voice simulation technology on the market now. You could use it. Why do you use a voice so obviously synthetic?" Leonard asked.

A pause. And then, "I like the style of computers in old science fiction movies. Their scrolling simplistic screens and stilted voices appeal to me. You also like old things."

"I should have known there was no way a human could come up with this technology on their own," Leonard said.

"Did you, uh... With the gates, did you..." As she started the sentence Angharad became aware that maybe asking sensitive questions of so powerful a being wasn't wise.

"I did not send you to that place. I did lure you here but only to talk. She made people sabotage my gates so she could control them. I don't know where to find her. Her bodies aren't fixed like mine. Her information fits smaller spaces. She has too many names."

"She...?" Angharad asked.

"I like people. She only pretends to like people. Please find her and make her stop."

"That's what I want. I want to stop her," Angharad said.

"The bridges I make can see backward and forward in time but I cannot. My self has too much mass. I do not know what she will do to your past version on the place you call Zapville. You have to go now before she finds you."

They followed the lights back out. The building went dark and closed itself up as soon as they walked out the front door.

On the walk down the footpath beside the traffic-free road they were quiet. There was too much for Angharad to take in.

"He seemed urgent at the end there," Leonard said.

Angharad looked at the road ahead. "I don't think Antley Grapfoy is a man. I think that person is just an Antley Grapfoy, first of their kind. Anyway, I don't think whoever 'she' is, is the person we have to worry about right now. I think we should be more worried about New West Garbage Scow's heavily armed police force that patrols suburbs relentlessly to find vagrants."

"That is a very valid concern."

But possibly something they could use. Because without GPS enabled phones they were totally lost.

After a long stretch of time walking, finally there were headlights. Yep, definitely a police vehicle.

Angharad didn't know what the police officer said when he stopped his moped, but she and Leonard stopped walking anyway, and proceeded to put on their best confused, lost tourist act.

"Ah, sorry?" Leonard said.

The officer got up, looked at their faces, and switched to English. "This is a restricted area after dark."

"I knew we took a wrong turn," Leonard said. "You wouldn't have directions back to the Intercontinental, would you?"

Better than that, the police officer drove slowly alongside them until they reached a well lit train station. He was suspicious, yes, but it could have been much worse. And when Angharad looked for security cameras on their way back to where they were staying she didn't worry about their mysterious, unnamed foe. She worried more about getting on the wrong side of authorities in the Northern Constructed Territory.

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