Free The Demi-Monde: Winter by Rod Rees Page A

natural. She shivered: the thought of being involved in anything that required her meeting or interacting with that madman again most certainly did not appeal at all. Not even for a million bucks …
    ‘You met Heydrich?’ asked the General.
    Ella nodded distractedly. She didn’t feel like talking. Meeting close up and personal with such pure, undiluted evil had really taken the wind out of her sails. She felt empty … weak … vulnerable.
    ‘Reini was at his despicably racist best,’ observed the Professor. The Professor was sitting in a chair stationed as far away from the General as the room’s architecture would allow: it was obvious that they disliked one another. The frisson of their mutual loathing infected the atmosphere of the room.
    ‘Is Heydrich typical of the Dupes you’ve used to populate the Demi-Monde?’ asked Ella quietly. That there were more like Heydrich made her flesh creep.
    The General shook his head vigorously. ‘Thankfully, no. Heydrich is what we classify as a Singularity. These, the ultimate class of high-performing psychopath, are very rare: we see only a dozen or so of them in a century. That’s why we only seeded twenty into the Demi-Monde, four in each Sector. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on the way you look at it – two of them are already dead: Henry Tudor and Ivan Grozny were assassinated by Heydrich when he staged a coup to take over two Sectors of the Demi-Monde. A shame really, I thought Henry was one of the more interesting of the Professor’s PreLived creations. He was the only one with anything approximating to a sense of humour.’
    Hand shaking, Ella picked up her cup of coffee and took a drink, hoping the caffeine would bring her out of her funk. What sort of maniac, Ella wondered, thought these games up? She put the cup firmly back down on its saucer. ‘Okay, so I’ve met Heydrich. The question is: so what? What has all this to do with me? Let’s cut to the chase, shall we, General?’ Now all she wanted to do was put as many miles of interstate between her and the Demi-Monde as was humanly possible.
    Screw the million bucks.
    No amount of money would persuade her to come anywhere near Heydrich again.
    The General glanced nervously at Ella; he was obviouslydiscomfited by her discomfort. ‘As I’ve explained to you, the Demi-Monde is not a predictable simulation … it’s a heuristic program, that teaches itself. As soon as it was switched on four years ago it was independent, free of its creator’s control, free to develop anarchically. Suffice it to say, Miss Thomas, that how the Demi-Monde operated post-initiation – or post-OutSet as it is called technically – came as something of a surprise to all of us. We had designed the Demi-Monde to be a very hostile environment for our neoFights, to be a perfect replication of an Asymmetric Warfare Environment. What no one expected was that it would be a life-threatening environment.’
    Now that was a phrase that made Ella’s eyes widen. ‘Look … I really don’t understand all this “life-threatening” mumbo. I thought you told me that the Demi-Monde is only a computer game … that it’s only a simulation. Surely if the shit hits the fan in a computer simulation you still have the ultimate power. You can always pull the plug.’
    ‘We had the ultimate power, Miss Thomas,’ said the General quietly. He turned to the Captain. ‘I think, Captain, it might be useful if I give Miss Thomas a little more background to the Demi-Monde.’
    The Captain illuminated a screen at the side of the General’s office to show what appeared to be the picture of a crudely drawn dartboard. ‘This is a map of the Demi-Monde. It is, as you can see, a circular world stretching thirty miles across, which is home to thirty million NowLive Dupes. Each of these Dupes is, thanks to the colossal processing power of ABBA, a discrete, unique and independent individual who thinks, acts and interacts just like their Real