Brain Games (Rich Weed Book 3) Read online

  BRAIN GAMES

  ALEX P. BERG

  Copyright © 2016 by Alex P. Berg

  All rights reserved. Published by Batdog Press.

  ISBN 978-1-942274-20-9

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer or with written permission from the author. For permission requests, please visit: www.alexpberg.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in this novel are a product of the author’s imagination.

  Cover Art: Damon Za (www.damonza.com)

  Book Layout: www.bookdesigntemplates.com

  If you’d like to be notified when the next Rich Weed novel is released, please sign up for the author’s mailing list at: www.alexpberg.com/mailing-list/.

  Table Of Contents:

  Chapters:

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30

  About the Author

  1

  The hot rays of Tau Ceti filtered down through the sky, cutting through distant cirrus fragments as they barreled pell-mell toward the gleaming hulls of freighters, cutters, and clippers, Kestrels™ and Photons™, which stretched for kilometers along the wide expanse of the sales lot. The air rippled with latent heat, the pavement hissed and moaned, and I thanked science for the shade drone that hovered overhead, misting me with chilled rose water.

  A short, stocky man stood next to me in the shade patch, impeccably dressed in an ivory-colored Hempette jacket and matching dress shorts. His heavily-styled bouffant hair glistened unnaturally from the drone’s mist, but better that than faint under the sun’s barrage.

  He cast his hand toward a sleek, glossy ship in front of us and launched into another spiel. “Now this is a craft I think might be right up your alley, Mr. Weed. The Kestrel™ Chinook Z-Class, part of their Zephyr line. A sleek one hundred thousand kilograms, capable of a continuous fusion-powered, resonant cavity-driven thrust of over five million Newtons—a ludicrously high amount for a ship of this weight, so don’t say I didn’t warn you. Just be sure to invest in a top of the line pressure suit before you get frisky with the throttle. But in case you were thinking this was merely a racer, think again. The Chinook features quarters for four, each impeccably equipped with multi-purpose retractable furnishings and appliances. Separate washrooms. And don’t even get me started on the cockpit…”

  Stan, as he’d introduced himself upon my arrival at the shipyard, gestured aggressively with his hands as he talked, alternating between finger guns jabbed toward the ships in question or held vertically as a frame to his face. His style grated on me. Personally, I would’ve much preferred a sales droid over the man’s irritating delivery, but androids, as calm and cool as they were, couldn’t provide that ‘human touch’ so desired in high priced spaceship sales. Besides, droids were terrible negotiators due to their programmed predispositions of kindness, subservience, and respect toward humans.

  I wiped a bit of chilled mist from my brow with the back of my hand, checking on the resilience of my own pomade-styled hair as I did so. Stan droned on about friction regulators, gold-plated toilet seats, and any number of other equally useless add-ons that would only serve to inflate my ego and the purchase price of the vehicle in question.

  I waved a hand at Stan. “Yes, yes. I think I can live without that particular piece of junk. What I want to know is…does it have an Alcubierre drive?”

  Before he could answer, a derisive sniff drew my attention to the side.

  I turned to stare at Carl, my android manservant and onetime nursemaid turned sleuthing partner. He stood next to Stan’s hovercart outside the edge of the drone’s shadow, not a single droplet of sweat rolling through his short shorn blond hair despite the Cetie heat and the dark green tartan jacket draping his shoulders—one of the perks of his inorganic origins. A smirk curled one corner of his lips, but it didn’t do anything to mar his otherwise perfectly chiseled features.

  I cleared my throat. “You, ah…have something to add?”

  Carl met my eyes. “Passive-aggressive behavior doesn’t suit you. You know exactly why I sniffed. We discussed it before. Warp drive technology is tremendously energy intensive. A reactor potent enough to power an Alcubierre drive is probably going to weigh in excess of fifty thousand kilograms alone, never mind the drive itself or the resonant cavity thrusters you’d still need for intrastellar and terrestrial transport. You’re not going to find that technology on a ship of this size.”

  “You don’t know that for a fact,” I said. “Perhaps there have been technological advancements in warp drive function since the last time we checked.”

  Carl rolled his eyes, which was a plain enough answer for me.

  I turned back to Stan. “Carl’s right, I assume?”

  Stan nodded. “Unfortunately yes, sir. Warp drives simply aren’t an option on ships within this weight class. But the Chinook is a superb vehicle in every other regard. Fast. Sleek. Comparatively affordable. Perhaps I could give you a tour of the inside?”

  Comparatively was the operative term. I’d received a massive windfall from my last case with interstellar transport titan InterSTELLA, but even their largesse only stretched so far. “I’m not sure an intrastellar vehicle is going to cut it. I want more freedom than that. Isn’t there anything with an Alcubierre drive within my price range?”

  “Remind me again, sir,” said Stan. “That was…?”

  “About six millions SEUs,” I said. “Although I could probably push it to…nine?”

  Carl winced at my negotiating skills, and given his predispositions, that said something.

  Stan scrunched his face. “Ah. Yes. Well…it’s possible. I don’t think we have anything in our catalog that could be purchased at that price new, but if we expand our search to pre-owned vessels we might be able to find a contender. Perhaps a used corvette or a even a freighter, if it’s a bit of a jalopy—er, I mean, fixer-upper. Let me run a search through our servenets…”

  Stan trailed off with that glazed look indicative of active Brain usage—Brains, of course, being the organically-integrated computing systems the vast majority of us had implanted into our cerebral cortexes shortly after birth. While some chose to forgo them—or more accurately, some parents chose for their children to forgo them—those of us who weren’t science-hating hippies benefitted greatly. Brains provided us instant access to the public servenets, putting the collective knowledge of the sentient races at the tips of our nerve endings. We could take part in immersive Brain experiences that simulated sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and physical sensations, even in the most private and sensual of ways, and we could watch vids of cats falling into bathtubs at a moment’s notice.

  Want me to queue one up?

  Without waiting for an answer, my own Brain’s curator, Paige, overlaid a montage vid of feline fails into the corner of my vision.

  I suppressed a chuckle as an unfortunate tabby backflipped into a bucket and mentally waved Paige off. Not now. I’ve got business.

  She obliged me by turning the vid off, but not before shooting off her mouth. You started it with your unhealthy obsession of watching animals injure themselves.

  ‘Unhealthy’ seemed a touch much, but I’d long since learned to take Paige’s barbs with a grain of salt. Ultimately, her verbal sparring was more my fault than hers. When initializing her so many moons past, I’d chosen bubbly and cynical as her primary personality parameters, and she’d only grown more gleefully combative as the years rolled by, all in response to my own behavior. She was clever like that. While she
might’ve not technically been conscious, she was as close as you could come without crossing the line.

  Stan surfaced from his delve into the digital deep, his eyes clearing. “Yes, as I suspected. We don’t have anything in stock to fit your needs, here or in our other locations on Cetie. But I’ve put in a query to our sister locations on Cetif. It’s possible we’ll find something within your price range.”

  Carl cleared his throat. “Rich, could I speak with you? Privately?”

  “Excuse me for a moment,” I said to Stan.

  The man smiled and nodded, but I imagined he secretly wilted inside, both at the prospect of losing the healthy commission he stood to gain from my ship purchase and from losing the drone’s cover and cool mist.

  I walked a few dozen paces with Carl, the drone shadowing me—literally—before stopping just beyond the Chinook’s portside wing. “Yes, Carl? What is it?”

  My longtime friend glanced at Stan before training his cool blue eyes on me. “Rich…why are we here?”

  “Please tell me there’s some hidden metaphysical meaning to that question I’m not grasping, because if you can’t figure out what we’re doing in a shipyard being shown vessels by a spaceship salesman, then I’m going to have to take you in for maintenance.”

  “Can’t sneak anything by you,” said Carl. “What I meant is, what’s with the sudden fascination with buying your own vessel?”

  “We talked about this,” I said. “Something about our last case with InterSTELLA got my explorative juices flowing—something you and your fluid-free interior can’t quite seem to grasp. It would be fun to explore the galaxy between investigations, and beyond that, so long as I take a few cases off planet, I can write the purchase off as a business expense.”

  “You’re right,” said Carl. “I don’t understand this burning desire to liberate yourself of the ten million SEU bounty you just earned, but if for some reason you’re dead set on purchasing your own spacecraft rather than buying tickets on an InterSTELLA transport like any normal person would, could you at least reconsider this warp drive fascination? Dropping five to six million SEUs on a top of the line Kestrel™ is one thing, but bankrupting yourself to purchase a beat up old freighter is insane.”

  “What’s the point of owning a craft without an Alcubierre drive, though?” I said. “There’s only so much to see in the Tau Ceti system. What am I supposed to do? Take laps from here to the gloomy, cloud-ridden skies of Cetif, over to the space casino circling Cetib, and back? Where’s the fun in that?”

  “You know you can buy tickets for your ship on larger freighters, right? You park your vessel in the hold, let the freighter worry about the warp burn, and once you arrive in a new star system, you fly back out. All the freedom of having your own Alcubierre drive with none of the hassle. Or the cost.”

  I furrowed my brows. “I don’t know. You’re still dependant on others. It’s not complete freedom. But your point about cost isn’t lost on me, and I do hate renovations.”

  A trill sounded in the back of my head, that of a Brain call. I waited for Paige to fill me in.

  It’s to your work line, Paige said after a moment. Originating from a Helena Busk. Care to take it?

  My recent financial windfall had made it so I didn’t need to take any cases, but money was only one of many reasons I’d decided to enter the private investigation field. I’d been independently wealthy before I’d ever set foot in my office, after all—the lucky recipient of my grandfather’s extensive land lease from his recreational marijuana plantation.

  “Sure,” I said. “Patch her in.”

  A voice sprung to life in the back of my head, but only a voice. No corresponding visual feed came through, which was a little odd, but some people preferred it that way.

  Hello? Mr. Weed?

  Yes. Rich Weed, private investigator, at your service Miss…Busk, I believe?

  That’s correct. Pleased to meet you. Her voice, or the Brain representation thereof, came across as strong, smooth, and confident.

  Likewise, I said. How can I help you?

  Well, Mr. Weed, she said. I was hoping I could engage your services. There’s an individual I’m looking to track down, and your name was the first I chanced across in the biz listings under private investigators.

  Helena was being generous. Likely my name was the only one in the biz listings under that designation. It was the last time I checked.

  Certainly, Miss Busk, I said. I’d love to help you with that, but at the moment I’m in the middle of a business transaction. Could you pop by my office to discuss this in greater detail in, say…forty-five minutes?

  Silence stretched for several seconds, and I thought for a moment Paige had lost the call. Eventually, Helena responded, but her voice had turned hesitant and hitching. You…want me to…come by your office?

  Is that a problem?

  More silence. Longer than the first. Ah…no. No problem. It’ll be a good exercise for me. I think…

  Sometimes I’m not the quickest on the draw—I blamed my years as a professional kickboxer for my occasional mental lapses—but even I picked up on the problem. Helena’s sudden transformation from a calm, confident woman to a skittish mouse coincided suspiciously with my request to meet her face to face, hinting at a certain pervasive personality type.

  We called them Intros. Unlike Extros, who relished in personal contact, Intros preferred to spend their hours immersed in Brain games and experiences over real world interactions. Their emergence had tracked closely with advancements in virtual reality, but their numbers exploded once Brain technology hit its stride in the early thirty-two hundreds. It was one thing to be able to see, hear, and smell events in a virtual world, but with Brain technology, virtual spaces became fully immersive, offering sensations of taste, balance, movement, and touch, and in every extremity of the body no less—including the naughty bits. Some people became so addicted they never left the house, and thanks to guaranteed basic incomes provided by governments due to the prevalence of droid labor, they didn’t have to.

  I proceeded with a bit of newfound compassion, but not an excessive amount. My mother had been an Intro, and I still resented her lack of involvement in my life. Well, if you like, we could meet virtually—though I prefer to greet my clients face to face.

  No, no, it’s alright, said Helena. As I said, this will be a good exercise for me.

  I kept a snide remark about Intros and exercise to myself. Very well. I’ll send you the address. Forty-five minutes, then?

  I couldn’t hear the sigh, but I envisioned it. Yes. I’ll do my best.

  The Brain call cut out. Carl stared at me with a raised brow, but not because he didn’t know what had transpired. Paige copied him on all my Brain transmissions except for the personal ones.

  Oh, I copy him on those, too, snickered Paige.

  Fine. The excessively personal ones, then.

  “So,” said Carl. “Three-quarters of an hour, is it? Given our distance from the office, that means we’ll have to head out shortly.”

  I shot him an affected smile. “I know, and yes, that means I’ve decided to think the ship purchase over. Don’t let it go to your head. We might come back here before everything is said and done.”

  Carl tried to hide his own smile, but failed. “Very well. Let’s go break the bad news to Stan before he melts.”

  2

  I rapped my fingers against my cherry wood desk and stared at the door. The etched lettering in the frosted glass, inverted horizontally from my point of view, read ‘RICH WEED, PREMIUM INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES.’

  It refused to open.

  “Maybe she got lost,” said Carl.

  He sat in one of the plush chairs facing my desk, his right leg crossed over his left and his tartan-draped arms spread out wide upon the armrests. Midafternoon sunlight showered through the floor-to-ceiling windows at my back, sending shadows dripping from my couch and club chair quartet into the la
b-grown fox fur rug that covered the right-hand side of my office. Up against the left-hand wall, a vintage polished copper espresso machine gurgled and sputtered as it brewed me a fresh cup of java—my second.

  “Paige…the hour?” I asked.

  Twenty-two forty, standard galactic time, she said. Which means its been just shy of two hours since your conversation with Miss Busk.

  “She could’ve gotten stuck in traffic,” said Carl.

  “Paige?” I asked. “Traffic report?”

  Nothing out of the ordinary. No major street congestion, and the tubes are running on time. Her Brain listing didn’t include an address, but by my calculations, she could be living as far as fifteen hundred kilometers away and still be here by now, assuming she got a tube ticket on short notice.

  I glanced at Carl. “You knew that already, didn’t you?”

  He shrugged. “No comment.”

  The coffee maker spat a few times and stilled. I stood and crossed over to get the cup. “Maybe it’s time we admit she’s not showing. I should’ve known better. Trying to coerce an Intro into a face-to-face meeting…” I shook my head.

  “Coerce is a strong word,” said Carl. “You merely asked. She acquiesced. And if you’re that concerned over her absence, you can always call her back.”

  I waved him off as I sat back down with my coffee, its rich scent filling my nostrils. “Don’t be silly. I’m not that desperate—for clients, cases, or cash. I just hope this poor woman didn’t suffer a heart attack upon leaving her apartment. If she’s a severe Intro, the shock of being in public could’ve done her in, especially if she took the tube.”

  If she were that introverted, she never would’ve agreed to meet you in the first place, offered Paige.

  I nodded in agreement, but before I could further the conversation, a chime sounded. I shifted my eyes to the front door and noticed a shadow on the other side.