Robin Sloan

# # #

October 26, 2009
Case log of hugin-19.lg.grailgrid.net, detective's assistant
Recovery status: incomplete

# # #

The sign on the front door said

ANNABEL SCHEME

INVESTIGATOR,
DIGITAL & OCCULT

but I didn’t know which part of the business our visitor had come for. Not yet. I'm Scheme's assistant—well, her assistant-in-training—and I'm trying to get better at guessing.

The man in the blue chair was young, mid-twenties, with dark freckles and a strong neck. He looked like he played sports. All of them. His name was Jason Helfer.

"I filled out the form," Jason Helfer said. "I mean, I filled out the form. Nothing's supposed to happen after you fill out the form."

Annabel Scheme sat across from him at her narrow desk. She was wearing her uniform of perfectly-cut black and charcoal. Her hair was down in coppery curls around her shoulders, and she looked tired.

"You included proof of death," she said.

"Yeah, a link to the obituary," he said, nodding. "Is this like a hacker? It's bullshit."

Scheme, I found it on Grail News, I whispered in her ear. The obituary. Jason Helfer's father is definitely dead.

"This is really more of a Facebook customer service thing," she sighed. "I don’t know if it's really the best use—"

"It takes them four months to even look at it," he said. "That's what I heard. They have nine hundred million users. They don't care about my dad." He was getting mad just talking about it, turning bright red. "I got a 'death issue support ticket.' Like, what? 'Death issue support.' And it's ticket number five-billion something… what number are they on now? Twelve? And meanwhile, my mom is going crazy, like, she cries every time she even turns on the computer…"

"I know," Scheme said, palms up, "I know. I wish I could help you—"

"And what if it's him." Jason said this suddenly, and quietly. But I could tell it was what he'd come to say.

"What?" Scheme said. She was suddenly awake.

"What if it's not a hack. What if it's him."

Aha: occult.

"What makes you think it might be him?" Scheme said.

Jason was quiet, considering. He spoke carefully: "The updates are all stuff he'd say. Like, go Cal, and stupid stuff about health care. He's the only person in Berkeley who hates Obama." Pause. "Hated. He was the only person who hated him."

Scheme said nothing. This was one of her tricks: the strategic deployment of uncomfortable silence.

Jason had been sitting straight in his chair when we started, like a kid at a job interview; now he slumped down a bit and stared at his shoes. "He's not even very good at Facebook," he said quietly. "He only joined a month ago because me and my brother are on it. So he does stupid stuff like send you a little football helmet, or invite you to play a hamster breeding game. He doesn't even mean to. That's a hard thing to fake, right?"

Scheme nodded. "Maybe."

"And I just posted about how I got into business school," Jason said, "and he... you know. He liked it. It said 'Marty Helfer likes this.'" Jason's face was bright red and bunched up, not from anger now. He was trying hard to keep it together. Finally, he looked up at Scheme.

"Is he dead?"

"He's dead," Scheme said—sharp and definite. But then, softer: "One thing I've learned is that the internet is an attractive place for spirits. It doesn't—resist them the way the real world does."

The expression on Jason's face was a mutant hybid of hope and horror. His mouth hung open a little bit.

"Listen. It's probably some Estonians," Scheme said. She stood up. "Ninety-nine percent chance it's Estonians, okay?"

"Well I wanna know," Jason said. His color was returning to normal, and he stood, too. "Either way, I wanna know."

Scheme nodded. "I'd like to take your case," she said. She led him through to the front of the office. "And I want to assure you: if anyone can figure this out, it's me and Hu."

His eyes lingered on the shelves piled high with books, folders, vials, and totems. "Hu?" he said. "Who's, uh. Hu."

"He's my intern," Scheme said, and smiled. "We'll open an investigation immediately."

Jason nodded. "Thanks. Uh. Thanks." He leaned in to hug her; Scheme's eyes widened in surprise, and she grimaced a little. Then he was out the door.

I don’t know why you even tell people about me, I whispered, if you’re just going to make fun of me. I'm not an intern.

Scheme was smiling again. She pulled on her long gray coat and tied her hair up behind her head in a bright red knot. "This is going to be a good case, Hu," she said. "You'll get to see Facebook."

Let me guess: 24-year-olds with big monitors and free snacks.

"No, no," Scheme said. She was back at her desk now, digging in the heaps of paper, tossing folders and envelopes to the floor. "No, no, no. Imagine the Census Bureau mixed with a dollar store. Facebook has some of the smartest social scientists in the world." She lifted a blue-and-white business card triumphantly from the wreckage and slid it into a coat pocket. "And some of the best salesmen."

She clicked the lights off as she stepped lightly through the front room. Some of the vials still glowed in the shadows.

"They're all set up in an old insane asylum next to Stanford."

You're making that up.

"Wait and see. They did weird experiments there. Very weird."

She pulled the door closed and wiped a cuff across the sign, brightening its shine. DIGITAL & OCCULT.

Scheme, do you think it might actually be Marty Helfer?

She jogged across the street to her car, a bright red Tata with a wide dent in the side. The sun was shining down hot and clear from directly overhead, and everything was overexposed in my camera-eyes.

"Let me put it this way," she said. She reached into one of her pockets for a pair of white-rimmed sunglasses. "There's really only a sixty-two percent chance it's Estonians."

# # #