The Elias Anomaly

Eleven

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As they were driving back to Dewsmonk Dulcie's wrist tab started to burble. Looking at the ident on the tab's screen made Dulcie's heart jump into her throat. The caller was Hopper, no doubt wondering where she was for debrief. It was nearly 1800, she should have been back in the hub an hour ago.

"Don't say anything," Dulcie said.

Joseph looked over at her as if talking had been, if not the last thing, then at least way down the list of things on his mind. Dulcie pressed the button on her tab that answered the call.

Monk's face ballooned into the centre of the tab's display. The little camera set in the corner of the wrist tab always made it look as if the person you were talking to was in a fish eye.

"Dulcie, I need to get going, where are you?" Hopper asked, his voice bearing an edge of impatience.

"I got sent to check out an anomaly in Odas," Dulcie said. "It turned into a bit of a job. Sorry."

"What do you mean 'turned into a bit of a job'? Where are you?" Hopper demanded.

"I traced the anomaly back to a folly," Dulcie said. "I'm nearly done. I will type up a full report and have it in your tray by first thing tomorrow, I promise."

"Dulcie, what's going on?" Hopper asked. "I think we should talk this over in the Hub."

"I haven't finished tidying up yet," Dulcie said. "I should be finished in the next hour or so, but I can't just leave it. I have work to do on my own folly and I just want to get done and go back to my island, there's a refraction problem in the skybox. I'm a bit stressed out. I promise I will get you a written report by the morning, we can discuss it at tomorrow's debrief."

"Well," she could see Hopper thinking about it. "Just make sure you do. I don't want the hassle of a disciplinary in my cohort, understand?"

"I understand, Jules," Dulcie said. "I'll get that report for you. I promise."

Hopper said goodbye and ended the link.

"You in trouble with your boss?" Joseph asked.

"We're supposed to debrief all the problems we've fixed to our Mentor every day. We meet up between 1700 and 1800," Dulcie explained. "The time kind of got away from me on this one."

"Sorry," Joseph said. "Why didn't you explain what had happened over your, er, phon-y watch-y thing?"

Dulcie opened her mouth to reply before she realised that she didn't actually have an answer to that. There was no particular reason that she'd not told her mentor about Joseph. There was the fact that the situation was hellish complicated, of course. That, in itself, was no reason not to go into it. Indeed, this was the kind of thing that a mentor would want to escalate upstairs. After all, Joseph's presence in the Cluster, brainwashed in a folly, was evidence something was wrong.

Technically, whatever was wrong was way above Dulcie's pay grade. When she came clean to Hopper then Joseph would be taken away. His avatar would be hacked and he would be ejected in the crudest way possible back into meatspace. There was no guarantee that the details of the anomaly would ever be shared with Dulcie, or even with Joseph.

Incidents like this didn't ever occur, and if they did somebody was making sure nobody heard about them. Or, at least, none of the Caretakers. The Cluster was the world's biggest artificial leisure environment. Bad things were not supposed to happen here. Now that is was clear that one had Dulcie felt, completely in opposition to everyone else, that she had some sort of right to know about it. She had found the anomaly, knowledge of its provenance was hers.