It’s time for the third part of the Dark Siren serialisation. You can see Part 1 here and Part 2 here, and if you like what you read, please do support an up and coming author and buy the full book as a PDF here for only US $7.95. Payments are accepted via PayPal or credit card.

Chapter 5

Avataria Post building.  22 January 2008 : 10.45pm PST

Carmen was in her upstairs office busy with clients, so he waited in the reception area for her. It was late evening California time, but in Avataria nobody kept ordinary business hours partly because of international time zones, partly because most had real life jobs.

Her visitors teleported away and she came down to greet him with the customary animated air kiss. He liked Carmen – one of the few Avataria figures who didn’t seem to obsess about her looks or care what others thought of her. A no-bullshit gal ostensibly from New York, the one time he’d heard her speak online at a press conference was in a deep throaty voice.  Reminiscent of Lauren Bacall after too many scotches and cigarettes.

Text appeared on the bottom left of the screen:

Carmen Verne: Mel!  good to see you! long time, no see! any injuries today?

He instinctively shook his head, then realised with a wry smile that the gesture would not translate to his avatar. It didn’t take long to get out of practice. He typed a line, the program automatically inserting his name:

Mel Nightfire: haven’t been online much…  too busy with rl

Carmen Verne: how’s that partner of yours?  what was her name? Emily?

This was a reference to an operative from the Federal Police he’d been obliged to bring along during the Al-Qaeda operation, although knowing Avataria as he did now, it had probably been a mistake to imply any intimacy between them. He lied effortlessly:

Mel Nightfire: we’re not together anymore… you know what Avataria’s like

Carmen Verne: lol… only too well. so how can I help? got a good story?

Mel Nightfire: it’s a personal thing… I wondered if you know Ariana… Ariana McDowell?

Carmen Verne: she’s a friend of Alan and Roxy – one of their bondage buddies. Did you ever meet Roxy Ryder, the Features Editor?

Mel Nightfire: No

Carmen Verne: she’s not online tonight, otherwise I’d introduce you…  ahhh! I get it. Might I be right in thinking you’ve got the hots for Ariana!  I don’t blame you, mind, she’s a very attractive girl… used to do some lingerie modelling for a friend of mine but I haven’t seen her around for a while

Simon used an audio routine to make Mel chuckle.

Mel Nightfire: seems I should take up bondage

Carmen Verne: lol…  you like getting your ass whipped then? You should come along to one of our little soirées… we need some fresh blood…

Mel Nightfire: I’ll ignore that horrible pun…

Again he imagined a throaty laugh.

Carmen Verne: Listen… if I get to see Ariana, I’ll set up a little social thing. Fat Freddy’s or the press club.

Mel Nightfire: that’ll be great… thanks Carmen, I appreciate it

Carmen Verne: I’ll send you an IM.  good to see you – take care!

Simon logged Mel out of Avataria and turned off his computer. Although Carmen was always good-humoured with him it wasn’t a good idea to press her too hard. He’d once seen her in a ferocious argument with a freelance journalist and he didn’t want to get on the wrong side of her.

He dialled the US Embassy, and asked for James Whitman, his main FBI contact in Australia.

“Whitman.” The voice was friendly, but correct, with a strong Bronx accent.

“Simon Austin AHTCC. How are you?””

“Good. What can I do for you?”

In his earpiece Simon could hear the click-cluck of fingers operating a keyboard. He had met Special Agent Whitman once before, at the opening of the FBI office in Sydney. Whitman was a strong believer in multi-tasking.

“You heard about the raid, I take it?”

“Yeah.”

Simon had never mastered the policeman’s knack of saying as little as possible. Disraeli’s maxim, ‘never apologise, never explain,’ never seemed so cruelly unattainable as he wretchedly explained the escape of their quarry and the loss of a police colleague.

“So you lost him. What are you going to do now?”

Whitman’s question was not phrased unkindly, but it still made him wince.

“He left a laptop. We managed to crack the passwords.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Usual stuff… everything you’d need to fake credit cards. But there was one thing. He had a Avataria viewer.”

“So he likes cybersex.”

“Uh… maybe… but that’s not the main reason. He used it to communicate with the Druzhba network.”

“That is interesting.” The cluck-clicking noise in the earpiece stopped.

“He’s using steganography. We found commercial software and our forensic guys located some images he’d doctored and sent through the Avataria system.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. The NSA is always running to catch up with stuff like that.”

“There’s something else.”

“You have been busy.”

Simon detected a rare chuckle on the other end of the phone.

“It’s only a hunch. There were four names in Kyrylo’s Friends’ List. Basically the main people he dealt with in-world.”

“Think they might lead us somewhere?”

“They might help track some of his Druzhba contacts in the States. But I think he’s got other things on his mind.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Two of the names are in-world rent boys. There was a message setting up a trick from a character called Joss Guest.”

“So? Like I said, maybe he likes cybersex.”

“Maybe. But nothing I’ve read in the FBI files suggests he’s gay.”

“True. He probably isn’t.”

“We found a clipping from an e-zine article in his Recycle bin… Salon.com. Do you know it?”

“Sure.”

“It featured a Senator called Jack Gallagher.”

“The Democrats’ great white hope?”

“Yes. It’s a few years old, but it’s basically about his negative attitude to gay marriage.”

“So he’s a little old-fashioned. That doesn’t make him homophobic. In any case, what’s the connection with Kyrylo?”

“That’s what I want to find out.”

“Sounds like a long shot.”

“Maybe it is, but at the very least if we can track these names it might lead us to Kyrylo and help catch his friends.”

The keyboard noise picked up again. Whitman was losing interest.

“So you’ve got as far as you can, but now you need help from the Avataria management?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Well, I could give you their number, and maybe an introduction, but even if you get to talk to them I don’t think it would progress your investigation.”

More clicking.

“Why’s that?”

“For starters, there’s a good chance that your names belong to American citizens, and there’s also the privacy thing. I would imagine that Avataria isn’t too keen on giving out that sort of information without a warrant from a U.S. court.”

“So what do you suggest?”

There was a pause, followed by more typing noises.

“Well, I can’t deal with this here. It’ll have to go to the folks in San Francisco, which is the nearest main office to Avataria. They’re in the Valley I think.”

“Silicon Valley you mean?”

“Yeah. Send me an email with all this in more detail, and I’ll get on to it. I can’t call them today – it’s too late.”

“Shit!”

Whitman’s muffled expletive was followed a moment later by the C major chord of a Mac re-starting. Yet more click-clucking, then:

“Oh Austin… One last thing. If we do help you with this, you are going to nail Kyrylo, aren’t you?”

The next morning there was a return email from Whitman in Simon’s Inbox. It was short and to the point:

The guy you need to talk to at Avataria is Martin Bremer. ASAIC San Francisco knows a personal friend who can smooth the way. He’ll phone you shortly.

Whitman

Chapter 6

Analasys Inc., San Jose, CA. 23 January 2008 :  4pm PST

“Busy, Frank?”

With an almost instinctive reflex Nez minimised the computer dating site window he had been studying on his personal laptop, and returned to his official duties – analysing and deciphering encrypted text embedded in suspect websites. He hated to be disturbed, and Everett disturbed him a lot – in both senses of the word.

“I need to speak to you for a minute. My office, OK?”

“You’ve got it Cameron.”

Everett was a short stocky man with a thick neck that gave him the look of an overweight bullfrog. He retreated down the corridor to his office, a featureless grey box with a window looking out over a high security fence at an equally featureless road in a business park in the Valley. Wintry sunlight filtered through ill-fitting vertical blinds. He sat down behind his desk, punched a few numbers into a keypad, and spoke briefly into his wireless headset. Nez ambled in and sat insolently on the corner of the desk, kicking his heels and waiting for him to finish. Everett motioned Nez to shut the door, then said abruptly into his mouthpiece “I’ll call him back,” and fiddled with the headset switch to finish the call.

“So how’re you doin’, Frank?”

“Fine thanks.”

“Divorce papers finally come through?”

“Uh huh. Last week.”

“How do you feel about it now?”

“Water under the bridge, Cameron.”

“What’s Eva up to now?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Everett wasn’t really interested in his welfare or mental state, Nez knew only too well. He was such a manipulative asshole, and had probably kept a file on every twist and turn of his disintegrating marriage in case it yielded ammunition for a future departmental brawl or an unexpected contract termination. But that wasn’t why he wanted to see him.

“How well do you know Martin Bremer?” asked Everett, leaning back in his chair sucking a pen and scratching himself. A missing shirt button exposed a few square inches of hairy paunch. “Weren’t you buddies with him at Lockheed back in the nineties?”

“Yeah. And before that in the IT Department at Marine Corps Engineering School. He went out on his own though, five, maybe six years ago.”

“Why do you think he did that?”

“He’s an idealist, and the more senior he became the more disillusioned he got with the hypocrisy of the arms trade. I think he wanted to be a force for good in the world.”

“Another bleeding-heart liberal, then,” said Everett sarcastically.

“Well… I guess you might think that. But I think he’s a genuine kinda guy.”

Martin Bremer was a household name among the computer geekerati. An undisputed software genius, he had found working for the defence industry too restricting and built the futuristic concept of Avataria into a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) with over 13 million players.

“There’s been a development. Do you remember Kyrylo, that Ukrainian guy we tangled with last year? One of the head honchos of the Druzhba network.”

“Weren’t you monitoring him for the Feds?”

Everett’s reply was characteristically vague. “For a while.”

“Has he resurfaced? I seem to remember they couldn’t pin anything on him.”

“He’s finally flown the coop.”

“How come?”

“Seems he could live with the LAPD hassling him, but the Feds were closing in and the heat got too much. About a month ago he surfaced in Sydney where he’s been trying to set up shop. We gave the Aussie police a tip off and they busted his operation last week. Except they didn’t catch him.”

Nez wasn’t really listening. He knew only too well that Everett had been tasked with monitoring Kyrylo’s communications, and had somehow missed the crucial piece of information that he was about to flee the U.S. Not only that, he was a fantasist and a time-server, and although deskbound, spoke in annoying staccato phrases like his hero James Cagney in G-Men. He’d probably die in harness, Nez thought, and be carried out feet first from his office still clutching his favourite gizmo and muttering that headsets increased productivity by 43%.

“Too bad.”

“Yeah… you could say that. Nasty piece of work.”

“Wonder how he managed to slip away…”

Everett looked at Nez sharply.

“You got anything to say, Frank, you just say it.”

Nez raised his hands in mock surrender.

“So what’s the Bremer connection with all of this?”

“In his rush to escape, Kyrylo left a laptop behind. When the Aussies hacked into it they found a Avataria viewer with some names. One of the Canberra cops thinks he’s using the game to talk to his amigos in Russia, as well as harvesting credit cards, scamming IDs and all kinds of shit.”

“He’s Ukrainian, not Russian,” said Nez absently, examining his nails.

Everett leaned forward over his collection of business toys and fixed Nez with a bloodshot stare. “I don’t give a shit if he’s a fuckin’ Eskimo. I wouldn’t normally bother with these guys, Frank, but the VP-Ops is under pressure from the Bureau to do something about it.  To cut a long story short, the Aussies want us to check out these names, and as you know Bremer, you’re the obvious guy to do it.”

Nez continued to study his fingernails, then slowly looked up. “Some of my best friends are Eskimos, Cameron.”

“You know what I mean.”

For a moment the two men stared at each other in an atmosphere of mutual loathing. Then Nez relaxed and fished in his pocket for his cigarettes. He placed the pack on Everett’s desk, took a cigarette out slowly and deliberately, tapped it on the packet and placed it between his lips.

Everett immediately rose to the bait. “You can’t smoke that in here.”

Nez eyeballed him steadily for a few seconds and then laughed. “I wasn’t intending to light it. I know the rules.” He took the cigarette out of his mouth with his left hand and put the pack back in his pocket.

Despite the pathetic display of alpha-male posturing that he was goaded into on an all too regular basis with Everett, Nez had perked up. He admired Bremer immensely, and although he hadn’t seen him for years there was still a lot of mutual respect and camaraderie. Ostensibly, the prospect of poking around behind the scenes in a virtual world that size was very attractive, yet he couldn’t get the notion out of his head that he was in some way being taken advantage of. He knew he shouldn’t let Everett get to him. But there was just something about the guy that wound him up against his better judgement. The job sounded interesting, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that something didn’t add up.

“OK… where do I start?”

Everett eased himself out of his chair and started rummaging in a filing cabinet. He passed Nez a folder. “These are the printouts of the files that came from Whitman, the Bureau chief in Canberra. Read through them, call Austin at the Hi-Tech Crime Centre – his number’s there – and then get on to Bremer. And make sure you get the whole story. It’s gonna be my head on the block if all this goes tits up. And one last thing… as far as Bremer’s concerned – keep it unofficial.”

Nez tucked the folder under his arm and got up to leave.

“So business as usual, Cameron.”

“When can I have the report?”

Frank paused at the door. “First thing Monday?”

“Make it Friday afternoon.”

Below is the next part of the serialisation of Dark Siren (you can see Part 1 here )

If you like what you read, you can buy the full book as a PDF here for only US $7.95. Payments are accepted via PayPal or credit card. As we said last week, we’re not getting any kickbacks, just the warm glow of helping an Aussie virtual worlds fiction author 😉

Chapter 3

Australian High Tech Crime Centre, Barton, Canberra.

23 January 2008 : 3.15pm EDT

Deborah Lauder was the Manager of the Computer Forensic Department. Thirty-something with dark copper shoulder-length hair, she was wearing a tight-fitting navy blue suit with an emerald green blouse that showed off her wasplike waist to great effect. She got up from the keyboard she was using and smiled broadly as Simon came through the door.

“Simon! A pleasure as always! How did you go last night with the heavy mob?”

“Do you want the bad news or the bad news?”

She frowned sympathetically. “Why? What happened?”

“One of the Tactical Unit’s men got shot. He died this morning.”

“That’s terrible! Did you know him?”

“No. But that’s not the point. I feel somehow responsible. I want to catch them, Deborah.”

“OK. You’ve got a computer you want us to look at.”

Simon took the laptop out of his briefcase and laid it on Deborah’s desk.

“It was a credit card racket. There was a stuff-up and the head honcho got away, but he left this laptop. A lot of it is routine credit card encoding software, Photoshop, lists of numbers, that sort of thing. But what intrigues me is the Avataria viewer.”

“The virtual reality game?”

“Yeah. He could just have been playing around, but I don’t think so. Both of the crims we caught said that he used to play it a lot, especially after 3 o’clock in the afternoons, which is when the Yanks are online.”

“And have you tried to log in?”

“I can’t… you need both a user name and a password. There’s a box to tick if you want your computer to remember the password, but there ain’t one there. Just the name – Ariana McDowell.”

“Sounds like a long shot. He might just be a cross-dresser!”

“You’ve obviously never played Avataria.”

Deborah smiled. “My first life’s complicated enough, thank you.”

“It is a long shot, but I’ve got a hunch it might lead somewhere.”

“So you want us to hack the password?”

“Yes, please.”

She returned to her chair and swivelled to face him.

“Anything else I can do for you?”

Simon was sure she had raised her left eyebrow, not to mention an unnecessary emphasis on the word ‘else’. He found himself almost blushing as he ran through a short list of things on the laptop he wanted her to have a look at.

“How much time will you need for this?”

She looked at him with a hint of amusement. “How long can you give me?”

“24 hours?”

“You are sooo demanding!”

Simon grinned. “I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

The next afternoon Simon was back again, this time with Wayne Chapman. They sat in the Forensics conference room, the sound of traffic on Northborne Avenue coming through the open windows.

“We found a few things that might interest you,” said Deborah, handing out copies of a list of the software and relevant files that had been found on the laptop.

“There was a package called Steganos, which without getting too technical, allows files to be hidden in other files. Even images. And it looks like Simon may be right about Avataria. We analysed the viewer’s inventory. Your man Kyrylo’s been experimenting with encrypting text, hiding it in snapshots taken in-world, and passing them to other avatars. I can’t tell you whether it worked though. Avataria is notoriously buggy.”

Simon leaned forward, fascinated.

“So he could be using Avataria to pass messages to and from his Druzhba gang in Russia or Ukraine, wherever they are?”

“Absolutely. But on the face of it, Avataria is an unlikely candidate. It’s tightly controlled, all text chat is logged by management and kept for a few weeks at least, and I would imagine the NSA can retrieve the image streams. But there are a few loopholes. Avatars can talk to each other – and although theoretically the conversations can be intercepted, in practice it would be very time-consuming to analyse them – there’s just too much data. But the main thing is the exchange of files in-world. That’s what he’s doing.”

“The lists of credit card numbers. The names. Security codes.”

“Exactly.”

“Is he using encryption?”

“If he is, it’s a simple code. The only encryption software on the laptop is a program linked to Steganos. Maybe his accomplices aren’t as computer savvy as he is.”

Simon exchanged glances with Chapman. “And what did you find out about his friends?”

“Another interesting thing. He only seems to have four.”

Simon laughed. “I’m not surprised, judging from the smell in that place we raided last night.”

Deborah looked at him with a withering smile. “Settle down. What I meant was that there were only four friends listed for Ariana: Carmen Verne, Alan Menuti, Ginger Stallion and Blow Daley. He could have 20 avatars for all we know. One for each cell of Druzhba. One for each scam maybe. It’s a classic compartment structure. The possibilities are endless.”

“But have we no way of knowing who these other avatars are in reality?”

“There’s no easy way. Avataria doesn’t ask for street addresses, so unless residents use a trackable email, you’d have to check IP addresses…”

“…which are notoriously unreliable and could be hidden using anonymising software.”

“Exactly.”

“Doesn’t the Avataria viewer give the option of recording all text conversations on the hard drive?”

“Funny you should ask that. In theory, yes, but it looks as though Kyrylo switched it off – potentially incriminating – but there was one transcript of a conversation between his friend Ginger Stallion and an avatar called Joss Guest.

“I don’t understand,” said Simon. “If a conversation was recorded, Kyrylo must have been there, even if he didn’t say anything.”

“That’s right. But this wasn’t the sort of conversation anyone was privy to. It was an IM – an Instant Message – which is personal, not heard by anyone else – and in any case the content strongly suggests it was a dialogue. Read it!”

Simon and Chapman dutifully read the short transcript dated 16 January that Deborah had given them.

“It’s all about setting up a trick.” said Chapman. “This Guest bloke is offering AV$2500 each for one hour’s sex if Stallion can supply a friend. Holy Moly! Seems a lot of money to pay for a root… how much is a Avataria dollar worth?”

“About AV$265 to US$1,” said Simon helpfully. “AV$2500 is about $14 Australian. Quite a lot for an hour’s work in Avataria.”

“So what does this suggest to you?” asked Deborah triumphantly.

“On the surface of it,” said Simon, “Kyrylo could’ve logged in under another avatar’s name. As Joss Guest for example. But there is another possibility…”

Chapman snorted. “Seems straightforward to me. It’s a gay meeting place. The bloke’s a shirt-lifter.”

“Maybe… maybe not,” said Simon, ignoring Chapman’s questionable take on the subject. “It’s true that one of the guys they caught hinted at that, but I’m not so sure.”

Deborah looked crestfallen. “What do you mean, Simon?”

“The IM system is not just restricted to dialogue. I mean in the sense of there only being two partners to a conversation. There’s a facility for setting up group discussions, like phone conference calls.”

“So there could have been three people privy to that conversation, except the third one was silent.” Deborah leaned forward: “Forgive me for stating the obvious, but there’s no way we can determine whether that’s true. If that’s a crucial detail, the quickest option is to contact Avataria.”

Simon pondered for a minute or two before replying.

“I have thought about it, Deborah, but they’re based in California. We’d have to go through the Bureau,” he said at last.

“The ball’s in your court,” said Deborah, starting to pack up her things. “Oh, I almost forgot. We recovered this from Kyrylo’s Recycle Bin.”

She handed over printouts of a clipping cut from an Internet e-zine.

“It’s an article from an online U.S. political gossip magazine called Salon.com dated 14 January 2003… a report of a speech that a U.S. Senator called Jack Gallagher made attacking gay marriage.”

“The same Gallagher who’s running for the Democratic nomination?”

“Looks like it.” She snapped her folder shut.

“What makes you think this is relevant?” asked Chapman.

“It may not be, but given the two rent boys in Kyrylo’s friends list, there may be a connection. Not only that,” she raised one eyebrow in Simon’s direction, “if you read between the lines, the journo seems to be implying there’s a whiff of hypocrisy about Jack Gallagher and his high moral pronouncements about family values. Which, by the way, he’s still making today on the campaign trail.“

Deborah zipped up her briefcase with a flourish.

“Have fun, guys.”

She sashayed away towards the double doors at the back of the room, which closed after her with a faint hiss. A whiff of expensive French perfume hung in the air.

“So what do you make of all this, Simon?” said Chapman, pulling out a stick of chewing gum and unwrapping it. “What’s the connection between an ex-commando, some bodgy credit cards, two rent boys, and a closet gay Senator?”

Simon didn’t reply immediately. He was gazing out of the window, the only indication of his thoughts the repeated twitch of his left eyebrow.

“Looks like I’d better log on to Avataria.”

Chapter 4

The Avataria viewer took a long time to launch. Simon punched in the name of the avatar he’d used a few months previously during the Al-Qaeda investigation, and a few keystrokes later he was searching the public details of the avatars on Deborah’s list. Each had a Profile, with its name, date of first entry to Avataria, Interests and Groups. One of the names was very familiar to him: Carmen Verne – Editor of the AvPost, an in-world gossip sheet published on the Internet. After an hour’s work he sat back and studied the FBI case files and the list he had made.

According to the Bureau, Kyrylo had left the US in late December for Australia, although no one could be sure as he was travelling on false or stolen passports. He was originally a member of a Spetsnaz unit in the Ukrainian National Guard – and he had specialised in codes and computers. These skills had recommended him for training in the United States through the Partnership for Peace program. He had been accepted for a modelling and simulation course run by the USJNTC at its combat centre in California. At the end of the course he disappeared, presumably figuring that his newly improved computer skills were far more valuable in the US than back in Ukraine.

Then things began to get ugly. He surfaced in Los Angeles and set up a thriving business scamming credit cards – coming to the attention of the FBI when it became clear that he wasn’t just a local spiv, but a mover and shaker in Druzhba, the Ukrainian-based criminal network. So the FBI put him under surveillance and due to the international connection the NSA started to monitor his phones. According to the report from the ASAIC San Francisco FBI, they were just about to arrest him when he disappeared under rather suspicious circumstances. That he had flown to Australia was only discovered when he made the mistake of phoning one of his old associates in LA and fell foul of a NSA intercept.

The profile of avatar Ariana McDowell was intriguing – ‘born’ on the 8^th October 2007, her Groups were strikingly similar to those of Carmen Verne. In Simon’s experience this might indicate she been stalking her, but maybe not in the usual sense of the word. Carmen was the AvPost Editor. She’d been in Avataria since 2005 and it would make sense for a newbie with a criminal bent to try and befriend her. She was very well connected.

On impulse he Googled the AvPost on the Internet and got five or six entries, the third of which revealed the names of the senior staff: Carmen Verne – Managing Editor; Alan Menuti – Advertising Manager; Roxy Ryder – Features Editor.

He flipped back to the Avataria database. Menuti’s profile revealed that he and Roxy and Ariana belonged to a BDSM group called Hellfire Inc. Simon searched again and found the group, but there was no further information.

The last two on Simon’s list, Ginger Stallion and Blow Daley, hardly needed researching. Gay escorts, and quite young at that judging by their taste in music. A penchant for bondage too, by the look of it. But why were they on Kyrylo’s list of contacts? Maybe Chapman was right and Kyrylo was gay, but somehow he didn’t believe it.

He opened a word-processing program and cut and pasted all the information he could find into one file.

Simon’s avatar was called Mel Nightfire. Although Avataria was not strictly speaking a game, there were combat regions where the normal rules were suspended. Avatars could be… well, not actually killed, but ejected from the sim or be subject to various other forms of banishment or avatar damage. Not a violent or aggressive man by nature, he found these zones heavy going, although the experience stood him in good stead when he’d fronted up to the AvPost and offered to write for them.

When there had been talk of Al-Qaeda making mischief in Avataria, Chapman had received a vague, slightly panicky directive from his political masters to investigate. Evidence was scant, and based on anecdote and hearsay. Simon thought that this was just about as ridiculous as saying, “There’s a nondescript terrorist loose in Belgium. Find him!” Both entities had roughly the same population, and in Avataria there weren’t even the usual signposts that could be followed to ethnic communities, political hotspots, or suburban ghettoes. Not only that, in Avataria almost everybody was living some sort of lie – wasn’t that what it was really about, the ultimate masked ball? So many residents employed elaborate disguises and covert techniques to cover their tracks from prying spouses or the over-curious they met online, you could almost call it the norm.

Avataria would certainly work for terrorists, he’d thought at the time. The most beautiful female avatar could be a Bin Laden or Abu Zubayida, and who would know? The only possible indications would be a poor command of English and an eccentric interest in flying but not landing commercial airliners.

So he persevered with the combat sims, and amused Carmen with his tales of malfunctioning helicopters, exploding skyboxes, and the humourless armchair warriors who populated them. Hell – he even got two articles published in the AvPost!

Reaching for his keyboard, he logged into Avataria, woke Mel Nightfire up, changed him into his virtual work gear of fatigues and combat boots, then teleported to the AvPost.