Remote work, part 4

 The work day in the mountains passed uneventfully.  At one point a young man in a tracksuit and trainers, chewing gum, came in and looked around, then took a place in the other room.  Ashley smiled and nodded at him and then forgot about him.  The only other thing worth noting, she thought, was that at one point she was sure Iris walked past the window but when she went out on to the veranda to say hello there was no-one there.

“I’ve only got spaces in Dunheim today,” said Iris when Ashley turned up at Doorways on Wednesday.  She ran a hand through her hair and looked, Ashley thought, embarrassed.  “I’m sorry; I wouldn’t normally suggest it to you since you’ve not even been here a week, but there was a group booking that’s meant I’ve had to juggle everyone around.  You seem like you could handle Dunheim though.”

Ashley smiled, though secretly she’d been hoping to go back to the beach.  In her backpack, nestled next to her laptop, was a bottle of suntan lotion that she’d bought on the way.

“I’m sure I’ll cope,” she said.  “Everywhere else has been good so far!  But… would it be possible, perhaps, to be able to go to the beach tomorrow?”  She fixed Iris with her gaze, hoping that she’d made a good enough impression on the woman to get a favour.

“Ye-es,” said Iris.  She went behind the reception desk and picked up a large book and turned a page.  “Yes!  I’ll put you down for there right now.  Dunheim is the sixth door along on the corridor, you can take yourself there, right?”

Right, thought Ashley as she walked down the corridor counting doors.  She was starting to feel like an old hand at this.  Ah, this must be the door to Dunheim.  Sounds like somewhere elves live.  Forest, perhaps?

On the other side of the door was a room as cold and clinical as a laboratory.  The desks were steel and grey and the chairs, one per desk, were padded and looked comfortable but they were an identical grey.  The floor was polished concrete in another shade of grey and the walls were polished steel and were grey wherever she wasn’t looking at the reflection of the furnishings.  There was, again, no-one else in there.

She walked around and realised that there were two doors out but they were hard to spot because of the monochrome colour scheme and and shininess of the walls.  The first one opened into a tiny steel-countered kitchen with a thankfully-white coffee machine and cups and enough room for two people to stand and talk.  The other opened into a kind of lounge: there were black cushioned couches spaced around a room as large as the first room and a large window looking out into what Ashley thought might be a cave.  The floor was more polished concrete and the walls were shiny steel still, so the grey colour scheme persisted.  The lights in the ceiling were a multitude of tiny recessed spotlights that she thought must be a real pain to replace when the bulbs burned out.

The window drew her attention though: outside there was no sign of a sky, and there were rocky walls not too distant.  Looking down she realised that there was a drop down to black water with a few white wave caps on it.  As she studied the view she realised that there was dark-green lichen and moss growing here and there on the rocks, and as her eyes adjusted to the low-contrast she starting to see things moving.  Distant things, too small to make out clearly, that moved like spiders clambering swiftly across the rock.  She shivered and decided to work in the laboratory-like room.

Choosing a desk she sat down and set herself up; the keycard connected her to Interwork and she frowned at it, wondering what novelty it might reveal today.  Then her messaging client pinged: Dave had sent her a message.

I was thinking, it read, and I want to be clear.  I didn’t want to lose you.  The new Director picked all the people to stay.

Ashley’s eyes widened.  Jenna had chosen to get rid of her?  She lifted her hands to reply, and then hesitated.  She checked the filesystem — sure enough, she could still see all the supposedly locked files.  Looking through the seating plan again she realised no-one who was being kept ever rocked the boat or made suggestions about things could be done better or more efficiently.

Picking people to be loyal to them? she typed back, trying to choose her words carefully.

Or who already are.

Ashley tapped a finger against her lips.  Dave was hinting about Jenna without coming out and saying it — maybe he was fishing to see what she knew?

The next hour was a sporadic mix of answering emails, trying to start an analysis on a new project, and messaging Dave.  He slowly gave up the detail that Jenna was going to be the new Director and that he thought there was more to the whole promotion than met the eye.  Ashley let him talk as much as possible and gradually she started to feel that Dave was looking for an ally.

I don’t think I’m much help, she murmured to herself, tapping the enter key to send a vaguely hopeful message to him.  I’m out on my ear as of Monday.  Her eyes went to the keycard again and she grew thoughtful.  But I suppose I do have one thing that no-one else seems to know about.

She stretched and wondered where the toilet was.  She definitely hadn’t seen it when she been looking at the cave, so she stood up and started walking around the room, examining the shiny walls trying to see if there was a door she’d missed.  It was on the second circuit, just as her bladder was starting to urgently complain that she needed to find the toilet that she spotted a recess in the wall at waist height.  Slipping her fingers in a little handle rocked back and a door opened, revealing a concrete corridor beyond with some doors marked with male and female symbols.

“Oh thank goodness,” she muttered.  There was a click behind her as though someone had come in, but her bladder was now cramping her stomach with its demands so she hurried through to the toilet and relief.

When she returned she was surprised to see that the room was still empty.  Curious she opened the door to the other room, but that was empty too.  She decided that she’d check the kitchen, but to avoid looking nosy she would refill her coffee too.  As she picked her cup up from her desk her gaze glided over the things on the desk and she paused.  Something was wrong… missing.  The keycard!

Remote work, part 3

 “It’s not redundancy,” said Dave.  He was pale and the background of his remote working space looked like an industrial building site.  “I didn’t technically lie.  It’s sacking.  I’m sorry, I’ve not had much say in all this.”

Ashley forced herself to keep smiling.  She kept wondering when Dave would ask her about her being visibly on a beach somewhere, but so far he seemed more interested in setting some distance between himself and what was going to happen.

“IT say you can’t see that directory, too,” he said, looking at something on his laptop screen.  “I still don’t understand how you found it.”

“I didn’t,” said Ashley.  “It was just there when I logged in.

“Well, IT say you’re locked out of it now,” said Dave. “That’ll have to do.  I’m sorry you found out like this but there’s really nothing I can do.  I was barely consulted about this.”

“I guess,” said Ashley.  “I suppose you get a promotion for taking all the blame, huh?”  Jenna’s new title was hanging before her eyes but she didn’t want to directly ask about it.

“No,” said Dave.  He looked suddenly forlorn.  “Ah, well, there’s… there’ll be a new Director.  I’m staying where I am.  For now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Ashley.  She suddenly realised she meant it.  “When did all this get decided, anyway?”

“About three weeks ago,” said Dave.  “It was a complete surprise to me, actually.  I got called into a C-suite meeting and Je— the new Director was there and they told me about the changes then.”

“I thought this kind of thing took months of planning?”

“Normally.  Yes.”

The call ended after a few more desultory exchanges and Ashley sighed and closed her laptop.  What she needed, since she was sat on a sunny beach on a lovely day, was a walk to clear her mind and stretch her legs.

She left her shoes behind and let the hot sand warm her feet and shaded her eyes with her hand and walked to her left.  The beach seemed to stretch on into the distance; the sea met the horizon somewhere but the blue of the sky and the water made it hard to figure out where.  Behind her the grass waved gently on the dunes and obscured any details of where she might be.  It was, she decided, actually really relaxing to be here, even if it turned out to nowhere at all.

A few of the other parasoled tables were occupied, all by people with laptops and notebooks.  Some looked up as she passed, a couple smiled or nodded, but by and large they all acted like strangers to one another.  Well, they were, she thought.  She walked on.

A little further along she decided that she’d stretched her legs enough and would turn round and go back — and her hand dipped into her pocket as panic struck her: had she left the keycard behind?  The reassuring hardness of the plastic confirmed that she hadn’t.  Then she saw Iris walk past her, a little closer to the sea and moving a little bit faster.  She raised a hand to wave, but Iris was in front of her already.  She thought about trying to catch her up, and then wondered what she’d say if she did.  By that point Iris had vanished amongst the tables and was gone again so Ashley turned round and strolled slowly back to her table, thinking about the strange happenings at Interwork.

“I think I saw you while I was walking on the beach,” said Ashley.  Iris, who was again half-hidden behind the reception desk poked her head up.

“No,” she said.  She pursed her lips and appeared to be thinking.  “I’ve been here all day,” she said.  “Busy day; lots of remote workers coming in.  I definitely didn’t have time for a break.”

“Oh,” said Ashley.  She had been certain it was Iris who’d walked past her, but calling the woman a liar clearly wasn’t politic.  “I must have seen someone who looks like you then.”

“It’s possible,” said Iris, disappearing behind the desk again.  Her voice became a little muffled as though she was looking into something; a box or a hole, Ashley imagined.  “You’re in the mountains today, if that’s ok, dear?”

“Ye-es,” said Ashley, who’d been looking forward to sitting on the beach again.  “Same door?”

“How would that work, then?” Iris popped up properly and shook her head.  Her brilliant red hair momentarily haloed her head like an explosion.  “It’s the door after it.  I’d show you myself but I’ve lost the, the thingy.”  She looked vexed.  “Call me an idiot and I’d agree with you.”

“I’d never do that!” said Ashley.  She edged towards the door to the corridor and Iris didn’t stop her, so she stepped through and let the door close behind her.  The beach door was three along, so she went to the fourth and placed her hand on the handle, a little bit nervous.  The handle depressed easily and the door opened.

On the other side was a large room with a wooden floor scattered with woven rugs that looked Native American to Ashley.  The wall the door was in was made of mortared stones and the side walls were wooden, but the front wall was a large glass window that had a view onto a veranda immediately outside it and then an incredible view of mountains.  The room was clearly set high up on a mountain side and below and in front of her the lower peaks and the foothills fell away to a mist-shrouded plain below.  She gasped and went to the window, and then saw the door the veranda.  Outside it was cold and the wind was blowing strongly enough to tug at her jacket and she had to hold her hair back from her face but the fresh air made her feel alive and she could see the lightly forested slopes of another mountain off to her left.  To her right yet another mountain reared above her, casting its shadow to its right; she guessed it would shade this veranda during the afternoon.

Going back inside she was surprised to find she was the only person in the room.  There were doors though; she found a kitchen, two toilet/bathrooms and another large room that had long couches and hanging basket chairs and a huge flat-screen tv, but no more people.  Either the mountain was unpopular or there were fewer people remotely working today, she thought.  She half-wished she was back on the beach — and if there wasn’t space, then maybe that was more popular — but the view was amazing.  She went back to the first room, sat down, and opened up her laptop.  The keycard, however it did it, connected to the internet again and there were her emails and workfiles and the minor mystery of how Jenna had become Project Director at Interwork and usurped Dave.

She opened up her email and quickly found she needed to send replies.  However, when she tapped on reply-all to a team email she noticed that there was something off about the email window that opened up.  She frowned, looking at it, wondering what was bothering her, and finally, just as she was thinking it was her imagination, she saw that the very top line of the email window wasn’t the usual To: field but From:.  The To: field had been pushed down a line.

“Well, you’re new,” said Ashley.  She clicked on the field and a dropdown menu opened up.  Her own address was the default — that made sense — but to her surprise and minor alarm everyone else at Interwork was listed.  She scrolled through, checking carefully, but it looked to her as though she could send an email as though she were the Chief Finance Officer and no-one would be any the wiser.

She sat back and picked the keycard up, looking at it.

“It has to be you,” she said.  “You’re the only thing that’s different here.  You showed me those hidden files yesterday, and today you’re saying I can send emails as anyone.  But why?”

Remote work part 2

 “Before you go in you need your keycard,” said Iris.  She reached into a pocket and pulled out a credit-card sized piece of white plastic and passed it to Ashley, who turned it over.  There was a picture of her with Interwork’s name and logo beneath it on the other side.

“How did you get my picture?” she said, turning it over again in case there was anything else on the first side.  There wasn’t.

“Camera in the entrance phone,” said Iris.  “While you were typing in the entrance code.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t lose this,” said Iris.  “Every doorway permits two way passage but a door only has to let you through one way.  The card is how you open the door to get back.”  She smiled at Ashley as though expecting her to say something, but Ashley couldn’t think of anything so just said, “Thank-you.”

“Good,” said Iris.  “Then off you go, and enjoy your remote working experience!  Oh, and that card is also your internet connection key.  Just keep it next to your laptop and you shouldn’t have any connection issues.”

“Thanks,” said Ashley again, feeling slightly stunned.  She looked at the beach through the doorway, and then at Iris who grinned and nodded.  Feeling as though a camera crew were going to leap out at any moment and tell her this was some bizarre prank she walked through the doorway.  Onto sun-warmed white sand that crunched and moved beneath her feet.  The smell of salt was in the air and the beach was noticeably warmer than the reception area had been.  A seagull squawked somewhere behind her and she turned, wondering if she’d see a projector or something else that was creating the illusion of the beach.  Instead there was an expanse of sand leading up to wiry green grass that swayed gently in a breeze that barely reached her.  There was no doorway.

“Uh, Iris?” Ashley turned around, and then around again, going through two full circles.  There was no doorway, no door, and no sign of how she could get back to the reception area.  Feeling slightly nervous now she looked around for a third time, now paying attention to the beach around her.  The shower station caught her eye and she remembered Iris’s admonition to wash her feet before returning.  She walked over to it, caught between enjoying the tropical feel of the beach — it seemed incredibly real — and a growing tension that she was trapped somewhere and she had no idea where it was or why.

The shower station was a ceramic-tiled tray with a slender concrete post behind it that supported a copper pipe leading up to a shower head.  The tiles were blood-red, which felt ominous, and the shower head was broad and rectangular and looked like standing underneath it would be like being caught in the rain.  There was a button on the side of the concrete post that, she guessed, would turn the shower on.  She looked round the back of the post and there was a little white sign mounted on it with a black rectangle drawn on it.  There were the three curved lines that indicated a wireless input and, with a sudden feeling of hope that lifted her spirits, she pressed the keycard against the sign.

The doorway was in front of her, the door swinging towards her as it opened, as though it had always been there and she’d somehow just forgotten to see it.  She heaved a huge sigh, her whole shuddering with relief.

“Did you forget something, dear?”  Iris appeared in the doorway holding a red bucket and a floor-mop.

“No!  No, just figuring out how everything works,” said Ashley.  “Er, I’ll go and… um, sit down!”  She turned, lifting the card off the sign, and when she turned back there was no sign of the doorway again.

“Right,” she said to herself.  “This is real, for some value of real at least.”

She sat in a deckchair after adjusting it to an upright position so that she could use the nearby table.  The parasol kept the sun off her, which was a relief as it had mediterranean strength, and her keycard indeed seemed to grant her internet access so long as it was no more than a hand’s distance from her laptop.  Her email connected with ease and downloaded four messages from over the weekend; the most recent was a reminder from Dave that the stand-up would be done over video conference at 10.  She checked her access to Interwork’s server and found it was slightly faster than she usually had in the office.  Everything seemed to be in order and she was about to close it down and start on the proposal for Three Red Mills when she noticed a directory on the server that she’d not seen before called Re-org.  Immediately curious, she clicked to open it and was only slightly surprised when it did.

“Dave’s getting careless,” she murmured.  There were several files in the directory: Headcount.xls, Re-org.doc, Seating.xls, Salaries.xls, and Termination.tpl.

“Not just moving us to a new floor then,” she said.  All the files appeared to be accessible so she clicked on Seating.xls.  If this turned out to be a mistake she’d rather not be caught having viewed one of the files with interesting names.

Seating.xls was a seating plan for the new area.  The first thing she noticed was that it wasn’t big enough: there were maybe desks for a third of the current project management team.  The second thing she noticed was that Jenna was now seated next to Dave and had a new title.  Then she realised that her own name was missing.

“I suppose I knew something like this was coming,” she muttered, closing the spreadsheet and opening the template.  The termination letter was as bland as she’d expected: no reasons, no detail, just a summary ‘thank-you and good luck in your next job’.  She looked at the clock in the corner of the computer screen: ten minutes before the stand-up.  Dave would certainly be at his computer.

She messaged him before she could lose her nerve.  ‘Hey Dave, what’s with this re-org folder on the shared drive?’  Almost immediately the messaging client put ‘typing…’ next to Dave’s name.

‘What do you mean?  There’s no re-org folder.’

‘Sure there is’ she sent.  She screenshotted the file list and added it to the message.  ‘Typing…’ flickered on and off next to Dave’s name several times as though he were starting to type and then deleting everything.  Finally a reply popped up.

‘You shouldn’t be able to see that.  Did Jenna give you access?’

Ashley frowned at the screen.  Why would Jenna have access to this?

‘No.  It was just here when I logged on.’

‘Can you see it now?  F5 to refresh.’

‘Yes.’

There was a pause now and then, ‘I’ll have to ask IT why you can see that.  Please keep it to yourself for now, ok?  We can talk after the stand-up.’

‘Sure thing.’

She closed the client and opened up the video conferencing tools bracing herself for a half-hour of ‘what I did last week’.  Then she looked at the seating plan again.  Jenna’s new title was Project Director.

Remote work, part 1

 “Dave’s called a meeting in Azure,” said Jenna.  All of the meeting rooms at Interwork had been given the names of colours.  “God only knows what he wants this time.”

“When is it?” Ashley could have checked her calendar but she was in the middle of wrestling with the word processor to put an image where she wanted it without having all her text mis-laid-out.

“Five minutes,” said Jenna.  She tapped her keyboard, locking her computer.  “I’m going to grab a coffee.  If I have to sit through a half-hour of more Tales from Project Manipulation I need something to keep me awake.”

Ashley finally managed to get the image in the right place with only one bullet-pointed list mangled beyond repair and decided that that was good enough for now.  She stood up and checked the time; not long enough to get a coffee, though if went past the kitchen she’d probably catch Jenna coming out.  She went by, catching up with Jenna who had just left the kitchen, and they arrived in Azure in enough time to find seats around the conference table.  

Dave arrived with the stragglers who had to stand near the back and he took up his favourite place, standing in front of the projector screen.  Surprisingly, he didn’t have his laptop with him, which Ashley took to mean that they weren’t going to have to sit through another Powerpoint presentation.  He smiled with a smile that looked both practised and forced.

“Thank-you all for coming!  Shush now, shush!  Dave is speaking!”  He waited, even though the room was quiet.  Then, “I have some news for you all.  The Powers-that-be—” he paused in the hopes of laughter that never came, “—well, they’ve decided they want to reorganise the office a little.  Now, that doesn’t mean redundancy, so that’s the good news.”  He beamed, and his smile died a little as he realised no-one else was smiling.  “Right, yes, well the bad news is that they’re going to move the tech teams up to this floor and we’re being relocated to a dedicated Project Compound on the ground floor.  This all takes a bit of time, and apparently Facilities want to use this an opportunity to refurbish a bit too, so we’re all being asked to work remotely next week.  Mike will be sending out an email a bit later on with details of the shared-working spaces that we’ve identified.  HR insisted that you all be allocated a space near to where you work, so no-one would have to travel any further than they already do, which is nice of them.”

Jenna leaned forward, putting her mouth near Ashley’s ear.  “In other words, they’re not paying any travel expenses for this,” she whispered.

“…find them quite acceptable really, and it is only for a week.  Our stand-up on Monday will be at 10 rather than 9 so that you all have a chance to get any little niggles worked out in the remote working space, but otherwise it’s business as usual.  Oh, and on the following Monday we’ll all convene in the cafeteria as I think Facilities want to show us round the Project Compound personally.  Now, are there any questions?”  Dave looked around hopefully.  “Really?  None?  Oh, I guess I must have been clear enough then!  Right, let’s all get back to work!  Thank-you for coming!”

“Does that sound a bit sus to you?” said Ashley as she and Jenna walked back to their desks.

“Project Compound sounds sus,” said Jenna.  “What are we, the Guantanamo Bay of Interwork?”

The email from Mike, who was Dave’s personal assistant, arrived about an hour later.

“I’m in Whitechapel,” said Jenna, looking up from her computer.  “Looks like it’s actually walking distance for me.  This might not be so bad, you know.”

“I’m by Liverpool Street,” said Ashley frowning.  “That’s odd, I thought it was all banks and posh restaurants around there.  But… it’s one bus.  It’s not that bad.”

“What’s it called?” asked Jenna. 

“Doorways.”

“Odd name… hmm, well, it’s got reviews on Tripadvisor, believe it or not.  Good ones, by the looks of it.”

“Tripadvisor?!”

“I know, right?  But there’s only the one match in London for remote working spaces called Doorways.”

The bus let Ashley off just before Liverpool Street, not far from the station, and she walked slowly along, turning right and following the instructions she’d memorised before leaving the house.  There was a shop selling flowers, then a pub, and then — she walked past it twice before she finally spotted the white-framed glass door set back from the other buildings.  It did say ‘Doorways’ on it, but you had to looking for it to see it.  There was a keypad next to the door and she remembered then that Mike’s email had told her the entry code.  She fiddled with her phone, found the email and the code, and tapped it in.  The keypad bleeped twice and then buzzed and the door clicked.  She grabbed the handle and pulled and it opened towards her.

Inside there was a narrow, white-painted corridor and then a flight of steep stairs.  Going up she realised that Doorways must have the upper floors, above the shops and pub, and when the flight of stairs terminated in a short corridor with another flight of stairs at the end she realised that she was actually in the building behind the ones she’d walked past.  The new flight of stairs ended on a small landing with light from a skylight above her, and another door in front of her.  She pushed it open cautiously and stepped through.

“Lovely to see you!” said a voice from nowhere.  She stopped, looking around.  The floor was a pale laminated wood that made her think of IKEA furniture and there was an empty reception desk in a neat semi-circle to her left.  On her right was another white-framed glass door, and through the glass she could see a corridor with several doors leading off it.  They all seemed oddly close together and she wondered if she was going to be sat in a tiny, cloister-like cubicle for the week.

“I’m Iris,” said the voice and a short woman with hair so red it had to be dyed stood up from the other side of the reception desk.  “Welcome to Doorways.  Who are you with, dear?”

“Um, Interwork,” said Ashley.  “I’m sorry, I’m new here.”

“Everyone is new everywhere at some time,” said Iris.  “Interwork?”  She moved behind the desk and opened a folder.  After leafing through the papers in there she pulled a sheet out.  “Aha, yes, there’s just you, right?”

“I don’t know,” said Ashley.  “I wasn’t told who was coming here.”

“It’s just you,” said Iris.  She put the paper down and smiled broadly.  “Where would you like to work?”

Ashley smiled back wondering if this was some kind of bizarre test.  She looked around again, in case she’d missed something, but there was still just this reception room and the corridors behind her and off to the side.

“Here?” she said.

“We do remote work,” said Iris, still smiling. “So… tell you what, I’ve got space on the beach, space in the mountains, and there’s always space in Dunheim.  Which of those of takes your fancy?”

“The beach?” Ashley felt like everything she’d said since she’d arrived was a question but nothing made sense about this.  Perhaps the ‘beach’, ‘mountains’ and ‘Dunheim’ were room names like ‘Azure’ and ‘Daffodil’ at Interwork.

“An excellent choice,” said Iris.  “Don’t get sand in your laptop, and do wash your feet before you come back out, please.  The cleaners complain about having to sweep the sand up.”

“What?”

“This way!” Iris gently nudged her towards the white-framed glass door to the corridor and then took the lead.  She walked to the third door on the left and opened it.  Ashley, following, nervously peered inside, expecting to see a row of desks and probably some other people curious about who was entering.  Instead, she found herself staring at a white-sand beach, a row of deck-chairs each with a parasol above it, the sea in the distance and a shower facility a short distance from the doorway.

The spy on the bus

 It was the hair that caught my attention, as it was supposed to.  The man was sat at the front of the bus on the upper deck, staring forward intently as though willing the bus to move faster through the crowded streets.  I only knew he was a man because I was sat on the opposite side of the bus, one row of seats behind him, and so had the only view of his profile that allowed me to see a hint of an Adam’s apple and a tiny patch of beard stubble that he’d missed covering with powder.  He was dressed as a woman of a certain age; that is to say an age where she refuses to tell you what it is and hopes that you’ll think that she’s younger.  He was wearing a brown, high collared coat that he must have searched through every thrift shop in East London to find and a blue and gold silk scarf to accent it, and his hair had been inexpertly dyed blue.

Only it wasn’t his hair; it was a wig.  You would never have known it; I would never have guessed if I hadn’t had the one seat on the bus where I could see the little details that had been missed, and I could see his naturally dark hair, short, just where the wig didn’t quite fit.  The wig was black, or perhaps a very dark brown, and the dyeing had been done just enough so that it caught attention.  Whoever this man was, he wanted people to remember him as an older woman with dyed shoulder-length hair and a coat that reminded them of their grandmother.  He had gone to such as effort to put this image into my mind, and indeed the minds of everyone who saw him, that I had to know more about why he was doing this.

The bus crossed the junction by the Bank of England where the roadworks had been going on since the first Roman invasion, narrowly missing hitting one of London’s feral cyclists who had decided, as is the wont of their clan, that other road-users were inferior and to be ignored and proceeded up towards Moorgate station.  The man pretending to be a woman reached behind him with one white-gloved hand and rang the bell.  I immediately started fussing as though realising that my stop were imminent and so, when he/she descended the stairs I was able to follow, stumbling and mis-stepping, and being completely ignored as a typical slow-thinker on the bus.

I alighted with another mis-step in order to allow myself time to look around and generally seem annoyed with busses, their drivers and the world in general, and so appreciate without seeming to that the disguisee was walking briskly, but not so fast as to draw attention, up the street.  Their gaze was across the road so, to keep myself unobtrusive, I crossed the road, narrowly avoiding another feral cyclist for whom pedestrians were… well, pedestrian.  As they shouted foul imprecations about my mother I reached the relative safety of the pavement (cyclists in London have no qualms about riding on the pavement if that will maximise the chaos they can sow) and they struck a pothole that the roadworks were, ostensibly, to solve and so we went our separate ways.  My quarry, for want of a better term, was far nicer-mannered than I and crossed the road at the pedestrian crossing at the traffic lights.  I had anticipated this and deliberately dawdled, but even so I was only just behind them as they headed towards London Wall and I needed to find a way to slow down a little.  Thankfully the street was moderately busy and so it was easy enough to fall a little further behind the disguisee every time another person managed to walk into my path while staring, rapt, at their phone.

They came to a halt at a café some minutes later and, looking around in a way that no Londoner ever has, they seated themselves a little fussily at an outside table.  I went inside and sat at a table in the window where it was easy to continue my observations and where the wind didn’t rustle my clothes and chill me to the bone.

Two minutes later a young man in a black suit and a grey shirt that didn’t really match it at all came in, looked around, and then glared at me.

“I think that’s my table,” he said.  Not quite aggressively, but certainly with emphasis.

“We can share, love,” I said.  “There’s three empty chairs here.”

“Hmph.”

He sat down though, and the waiter came over with a look of trepidation: one never knows in London how strangers will interact until you’ve had a chance to watch them.

“Is everything alright?” he asked, his tone indicating that he did not want to get involved in a private quarrel.

I nodded.  “I’ll have a latte,” I said; it was still breakfast time as far as I was concerned.  “My guest will have…?”

The young man looked up.  “I thought you were my guest,” he said.  “We can argue it out over the bill.  I’ll have an orange juice please.”

The waiter hesitated, obviously concerned still, but since we weren’t shouting or throwing things, he opted for discretion and left.

“Well?” said the young man quietly.  He appeared to be engrossed in his phone.  I took a free newspaper out of my bag.

“He’s good,” I said.  “The wig is a nice touch; provides something for people to notice that distracts them from everything else.  He missed a couple of things, but he’s convincing.  He is good enough.”

The young man smiled, seemingly at his phone.  The waiter set our drinks down and backed off.

“I’ll leave you to pay,” said the young man.  He picked his orange juice up and headed outside to sit with the disguisee and let them know that they’d passed our first test.

The dream of Quyani

 It was Madame Sosotris’s tarot deck, I’m sure of it.  I stole it, on commission, from the old witch while she was out drinking in some surely insalubrious pub in the streets of the Camden Throne.  It was a surprisingly easy job: you’d think the best Seer in the city would have more protection on her rooms but the door barely had a lock worth talking about and the cards were in a chest with a lock — but the key had been left in the lock!  One turn, one click, and there were the cards.

They were a tatty bunch, I was surprised by that too.  I expected slivers of ivory painted by some ancient Chinese sage, or elaborately ornate pieces of canvas; maybe even thin slips of balsa wood engraved by one of the ten Dead Engravers that the priest in Ormswood Church likes to talk about.  Instead I got a bunch of tattered bits of card that you wouldn’t make a cereal box out of.  They were painted, I’ll give you that, but some of the pictures on there looked like they’d been crayoned on first and then prettied up a bit.  Probably to justify having to pay for a reading from them.

I did look around, in case these were a trap and the real cards were somewhere else, but there wasn’t all that much in the room.  Old furniture, antimacassars, a box of tissues that looked like she was expecting an elephant with sinus trouble.  Of course, her everpresent cold is something they all talk about, but that box seemed unnecessary nonetheless.  There was a book on a table by the door but it was just a guest-book; you signed your name in it when you came, and by the looks of things you wrote the time you left in it too.  I’ve seen them before in businesses, especially those new warehouses down by the dock where the security is tighter than a gnat’s arse, but… but shouldn’t the greatest Seer in the city be able to see when her client’s leaving?  Like, literally, with her eyes?

My contact, a ratty little man who goes by the name of Corners and who squeaks like a rat when you grab him by the throat and hoist him off the ground so that his shiny-booted feet dangle five centimetres above the floor, confirmed the cards to me when I called him on the phone and then hung on me.  I called him back and made my point, a little forcibly, perhaps, that I needed to know where to deliver the merchandise.

“Back of the Bunch of Grapes,” he said, as predictable as ever.  “Tomorrow morning, just before ten.”

I’m not much for hanging on to the merchandise for long, but overnight didn’t seem like a big problem.  It wasn’t like I’d signed my name in the guest-book or left fingerprints where they could be found, so I sauntered home, dropped the cards on my night-stand, and was going to make myself a nice hot chocolate when I yawned loud and long enough to crack my jaw and tiredness hit me like a chair crashing down on a man’s head in a bar fight.  I looked at the bed and it looked comfortable so I figured I’d just lie down for a minute.  As soon as I lay down I felt heavy and warm and I just pulled the comforter up to my neck and my eyes closed and I was gone.

It was the cards.  I’m sure they made me tired, somehow, and then plunged me into that dream.  Because the next moment I was standing next to my bed, wearing absolutely nothing, and picking up the cards and turning the top one over.  And there’s no way in the whole of the Unreal City that I’d go messing with tarot cards stolen from Sosotris.

The card showed a doorway when I looked at it, so I put it back on the top of the deck, face-down, and turned to leave my room.  The doorway out looked like the one on the card, but when I picked the card up again it had changed and now was the Fool, starting out on his journey across the Major Arcana.  He looked familiar but then I realised he was naked too and put the card back down.  I don’t remember leaving the room, but I must have gone through the doorway somehow.

I found myself stood, dressed in grey pants and a blue shirt, on a smooth, black stone path that lead alongside a quarry.  The moon was in the sky, hanging pretty central over the quarry, and there were a couple of small, cigar-shaped clouds scudding away from it in both directions.  The path glinted and tried to reflect the moon but it was as though the light kept trying to avoid it, so there seemed to be moving patches of shadow all along it.  That didn’t bother me much so I set off towards the quarry, wondering what was being dug up there.

I think I walked for an hour, but it felt like ten minutes and nothing around me seemed to change until I got there.  Then I gazed down onto Quyani, the City in the Pit, because that was what lay at the bottom of the quarry.  The steep black walls became sheer as they descended and the colour changed to a purplish red like new bruising.  The tops of the spires and minarets of the city caught the moonlight and shone like tiny torches except where the dragonflies clung and shivered their wings in the light.  They cast odd, mind-chilling shadows on the streets and raised walkways below, where people walked seeming unconcerned that such vast monsters were sitting above them.  Now and then a dragonfly would launch itself into the air and even from my high vantage point I could see that each must be eight metres long at least.  They would circle Quyani exactly once and then settle again on a new spire or minaret.  And after a moment another would launch, complete a circuit, and descend.  This was known, I suddenly understood, as the dance of the shadows.

“There is a prophecy,” said a voice, and there was a man stood next to me.  He was dressed ordinarily and had a hand on the neck of a donkey.  There were items in the panniers that the donkey wore and I thought that perhaps he was a merchant.  “They say that a man will walk into Quyani uninvited and tear a hole in the Veil.  Then the dragonflies will return from when they came, the dance will end and the City in the Pit will drown in lava.”

“That sounds bleak,” I said, squinting at him.  He reminded me of Corners and my hands were itching to make him squeak.

“Will you enter Quyani?” he said, and he looked me, meeting my gaze.  It wasn’t Corners, I saw that then, but if you told me they had the same mother I might have believed you.  “Will you see if you are the prophesied one?”

“Another day, mate,” I said as easily as I could manage, but the words were hard and harsh in my mouth and it felt like I was spitting them out.

“Then perhaps you should not be here,” he said, and he raised a hand.  I started to answer him — what bloody right did he have to tell me where I should or should not be? — but the ground heaved beneath my feet and I stumbled.  When I looked up again I was on the floor next to my bed.

I bloody was as well.  I’ve never fallen out of bed, not even when I’ve been drunk enough to have to hang on to the floor because the room’s spinning so violently, so I’ve no idea how I got there, but on the floor, butt-naked, I was.

I put the cards in the bread-bin, had a couple of bottles of chilled lager, and went to bed a bit later.  With a chair underneath the door handle, just in case.

Kill them twice

 Marvin had been dead for six minutes when he sat up, wheezed like a accordion being warmed up for a performance, and scrabbled futilely at the air with both hands for several seconds.  Jasmine, who had been going through his pockets and tsking at the amount of blood leaking from his cut throat, screamed and slammed face-first into the door in her efforts to get away from him.

“Chill, sis,” said Franklyn.  He gestured at Marvin who lowered his hands and stared vacantly into the middle distance.

Jasmine turned and looked at the resurrected corpse and placed a hand theatrically over her heart; the leather cuirass she was wearing easily prevented her from feeling it beating despite the deep gouges in it.  The cuirass was rough underneath her fingers and her words to Franklyn were almost as rough.

“You woke him back up, you moron?  What did you go and do that for?  And why didn’t you warn me first?!”  Her voice rose from a deep growl to a shrill shriek as she asked each question.

“Forensics, sis,” said Franklyn.  He knelt down next to the satchel he’d brought with him.  It was pale brown leather and roughly square and looked like it might have been used to haul vinyl around in the days when record players were still a thing.  He unstrapped it and pulled out a large picture book with bright images of dogs playing on beaches and children building sandcastles.

“Foreign what?”  Jasmine’s tone had settled on snarl now and she frowned, wishing that Franklyn would look at her and appreciate her annoyance.  The guy was good at his job but he was lousy at the interpersonal stuff and had missed her flirting with him three times now.  She was starting to think he’d have to go.  Mages weren’t all that hard to come by, after all, and not that expensive either.

“Forensics.”  Franklyn held the book up in front of Marvin and asked, “What do you see?”

“He can’t answer you!  You cut his bloody throat.”  As if to prove her point Marvin coughed alarmingly and blood spattered over his jeans.  Then a deep voice that sounded nothing like him at all resounded around them.

“A beach.  Two dogs are playing.”

Franklyn turned the page.  “And what do you see now?”

Jasmine watched transfixed as Franklyn repeated this three more times.  With the fifth question and picture Marvin suddenly went limp again and slumped to the floor.  He looked dead again; but then he’d looked pretty dead the first time too.

“What. The. Hell?”  Jasmine put her hands on her hips.  She hated it when she did that as it reminded her of her mother and her ‘little snits’ but sometimes the way she’d been brought up beat out her efforts to be more cultured.

“They have forensic necromancers,” said Franklyn.  “They just bring them in when they find the body and they wake them up and ask them who did it.  Easiest criminal investigation ever if you don’t manage to surprise the victim completely.  And even if you did the chatty corpse often provides enough detail to tell the police where to look for better evidence.  So this messes with them; the corpse only goes back one life, as it were.  When they try asking this one for answers they’re going to think they’re hearing all about his summer holiday.  And they only get one stab at it too, as the next time they wake it up it’ll only remember being questioned by them.”

“What?”  Jasmine vaguely remembered hearing something about the police force here being good, but the idea of resurrecting the dead to act as a witness to their own murder made her skin crawl.  “They can do that?  That’s legal? I mean, you’re doing it, so it’s probably not legal, right?”

Franklyn gave her a look that she thought might be adoration, but his voice sounded a little condescending.  “I do things that are legal all the time,” he said, letting a little unnecessary emphasis fall on his last three words.  “I only do the illegal things when they’re necessary.”

“Fine,” she said, waving a hand.  “Can I finish going through his pockets now? Only there’s a key to a garage in here somewhere, and you didn’t think to ask him about it, did you?”  She grinned, feeling like she’d won a point.

“Key’s over there on the desk,” said Franklyn, pointing.  “It’s labelled; Marvin was a neat freak I think.  So you can stop putting your fingerprints all over the body and I’ll get it cleaned off.  I’ve got a dinky little spell that cleans up everything from fingerprints to cat hair.”

“Cat hair?”

Franklyn pulled a small hessian sack from his satchel.  “Yep,” he said.  “No reason for any cat hair to be here; Marvin’s never liked animals and there are none in the neighbour houses.  So that’s going to be a clue for the police to confuse them a little more.”

Jasmine picked the key up off the desk. It was on a ring with a little green fob next to it; the fob had been written on.  “Garage 109,” she said out loud.  “He was very organised.”  She looked up at Franklyn.  “A bit like you,” she said contemplatively.

“Don’t,” said Franklyn, standing up.  “At leas—“

There was a bright white flash of actinic light and Jasmine, who had fired her tiny, sleeve-holstered, pistol at him, blinked.  Everything seemed to be staying white instead of returning back to normal and she felt oddly like she was floating.  She relaxed a little, feeling like she could just lean back and not have to worry about anything….

“And you’re back,” said Franklyn.  She blinked again, or tried to.  Now her eyes didn’t seem to want to work and she felt like she’d been rubbed with something very rough and very hot.  Burning sandpaper, maybe.  It kept on going and she tried to scream, but her mouth didn’t seem to want to obey her.

“You tried to shoot me,” said Franklyn.  He was watching her cautiously and it was as though she had a lot more mental clarity all of a sudden.  She could see the dislike on his face and the wariness in his movements and thoughts.  He was suspicious of her.  “You failed, because it never occurred to you I’d be shielded, though I can’t imagine why you didn’t think of that.  Surely if you’re going to betray someone you’d expect them to betray you too.”

That sounded like a question and she felt compelled to answer it.  “You’re too stupid to expect betrayal,” she said, though her mouth didn’t respond as well as she’d have liked and her words sounded a little muddy and slurred to her.  “You were too stupid to see me flirting with you.”

“Was I?” Franklyn laughed, but it was another question and she felt compelled to answer again.  

“Three times,” she said, deciding that he didn’t deserve a full answer.

“I can’t believe you thought that was flirting,” said Franklyn.  He shook his head, and produced the picture book.  She stared at it, though she was unable to move her eyes anywhere else, while she wondered about why he was showing her that.  He must have noticed, because he lowered the book briefly.

“You’re dead,” he said quietly.  “You attempted to shoot me and the ward deflected the bullet and it struck you in the head.  So… this is our last goodbye and me making sure that you don’t get to tell anyone about the garage or what I’m collecting from there -- without you now.  So,” and he held the book back up, “what do you see?”